Shadows on the Stars
by SilverRavenStar
Summary: Portions of Two Towers and Return of the King, told from the perspectives of Éowyn and Éomer, respectively. It follows bookverse, not movie, with one minor change – Theodred's death. Chapters 10 and 11 now posted.
1. Éowyn – Shadow and Steel

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As one of my reviewers very helpfully pointed out, I do make one alteration from book-verse – Théodred is brought home to die at Meduseld instead of at the Fords of Isen. This is a conscious departure on my part, as I wanted to give Éowyn one last chance to interact with her cousin, and it serves as a good stepping-stone to explore her feelings about a number of other things. In all else, I am Tolkien's servant, not PJ's.

CHAPTER ONE  
Éowyn – Shadow and Steel

It was the silence that woke me.

You might think it was commonplace to have a night without interruption, a night without twisted dreams. For me, it was a luxury, or perhaps a sign that everything had gone wrong. Each night, I was accustomed to hearing the faraway screams, shouts, the clang of battle in the distance. Orcs had made almost hourly incursions on our lands, and it was only the Riders that kept them back.

Had something gone wrong? Had the Orcs managed to slip through our defenses and slaughter all Edoras but me? I suppose it said something about me that when the night was quiet, I was frightened.

I could scarcely decide whether I wished to be awake or asleep. As frightening as a silent night was, I had been plagued by nightmares recently. Many of them. It seemed to me that every night while I lay awake waiting for the sweet descent of sleep, my room began to shrink, trapping me in a cage that grew ever smaller, until I withered and died.

The silence dragged on, becoming longer and longer, heavier, more frightening by the instant. What would I find if I left this shrinking bower? The Golden Hall of Meduseld asleep as it ought to be, or chopped to ribbons by Orcs that had come unseen, unnoticed?

_Stop thinking, Éowyn. _My thoughts led me deeper and deeper into this irrational fear, that I would be caught and chained.

I had to see. If at least to escape this damnable room. So I threw a cloak over my nightgown and picked up a dagger, just in case my darkest dreams were absurdly realized.

Outside my chamber, the halls were dark and silent, redolent with a sleepy peace. Why was it only me? Was it that I resented the net that had caught me, that seemed to wait to spring upon all women? I did not want this life of drudgery, serving a beloved uncle who did not even know my face anymore, while shadows skulked behind me and watched with hooded eyes.

_I am a daughter of the House of Eorl. _Even though I had reassured myself that no darkness other than that of the night filled these halls, I could not face going back to my lonely room.

_I am not afraid of the dreams. _I was angered with myself, for being such a coward; more like a mewling babe than the shieldmaiden that I was. And yet, this life had grown so dark. So dark that it swallowed everything, even the waning sparks of light.

My brother Éomer risked his life daily. Every time he rode out, I remembered what had befallen my father, Éomund. He had been killed by Orcs, but slowly, and cruelly. They would not let me see his body when they brought him home.

It was only much later, when he was safely interred in a closed tomb of stone, that I was allowed to come, a shy pale girl of only seven winters, to cry over him and plant the white simbelmynë flower that grew on the final resting places of all good men of Rohan. Even now, seventeen long winters later, the idea of crying over Éomer, of laying to rest the last of my immediate kin, frightened me more than I could say.

My uncle Théoden was trapped under the influence of the man who had once been his most trusted counselor, Gríma son of Gálmód. Whatever Gríma, faithless and accursed, had done, my king and kinsman was as weak and doddering as a man much older, and did not recognize me or heed my name. The worm had poisoned him.

There had been no word from my cousin Théodred, who had ridden afield a fortnight ago to the Fords of Isen, on report of trouble with Orcs there – and yet, no Orcs such as ever been seen.

Rather than the twisted, leering, sun-shy brutes that were the Orcs known to us, the reports were of a sort of goblin, man-high and thickly muscled, with coarse black skin and coarser speech. And yet – they had no fear of the sun, for they ran in it without being hindered or slowed.

I stepped out onto the cold balcony of Meduseld, tiled with stone and adorned with high wooden carvings filigreed in gold. Night swathed the land of Rohan in shadow. Far in the distance, across the high, sere plains, I saw the Misty Mountains, gilded silver in moonlight like the crowns of a great king.

No screams. No word, no fire, nothing burning, nothing dead. I felt the fool. But Éomer and Théodred had been gone too long now, and if there is one thing a woman of Rohan learns, it is how to wait, and to watch, day in and day out, for the sight of returning Riders.

If she is a common woman, she can run to her man, smother him with kisses, lead him to a warm hovel and a hearty stew. But if she is the Lady of Rohan, she must stand on high, and wait, before descending to greet them with polite words and traditional gestures. Then she leads them in to drink from the ritual cup of blessings.

There was a rough rasp behind me, the sound the worn edge of a cloak makes when drawn across stone. I turned slowly, knowing who I would see and yet dreading it.

Gríma, the man called Wormtongue for the lies he whispered into my uncle's ear, glided out from the shadows of the portico like a shining, jet-black snake. It was late, very late, but he showed no signs of having retired. Beneath the lank shadows of his hair, he surveyed me with a small spark in those cunning eyes of his.

"My lady Éowyn. I had not thought to find you here, at so late an hour."

"Gríma." The word was poisoned with my distaste for this man; his creeping manner, his voice like oil and steel, and those eyes that always watched me. "What are you doing?"

The snake slithered gracefully up beside me, affecting my manner perfectly; mocking my pensive gaze and the flutter of my anxious eyes, betraying my desperate worry for my brother and my cousin. "Why, it is my duty, as a servant of the crown, to aid wherever I am needed," he answered. "You seem unwell."

I touched the dark shadows beneath my eyes. "I could not sleep."

"And why is that?" He was the picture of solicitude, but he had started to circle me slowly, like something creeping about wounded prey before finishing it. "You could speak to your uncle about it."

A hot flame of anger sparked in my heart. "That would do no good. He would not listen to me. He would not heed me. Because of you."

His eyes widened briefly, before narrowing and becoming sly again. "My lady, you cannot accuse me of your uncle's illness. I do all that I can for him. Théoden King has no stronger supporter and counselor than I."

_And that's exactly why I distrust you. _I took a step back from him, disliking the look in his eye as he kept staring at me. "Leave me."

He circled me again, as if waiting to dodge in, to snap his jaws closed on me. "You seem so distant, so cold. Is your heart truly frozen, my lady? Frozen cold?"

"Frozen," I said impassively, gazing away across the plains, determined not to let him know that he _almost _frightened me. I had never trusted him. All of Edoras slept, and would not hear me if I screamed.

He laid a hand on my shoulder, and it was all I could do not to recoil. "My lady, I worry about you, so alone, so unsure, in this world of shadows and deceits. Have you felt it? The closing in about you, as if your own chamber seeks to swallow you?"

"_Leave me." _I wrenched away from him, my hand going to touch my hidden knife from instinct. "I worry about my brother, and my cousin. They have been a long time away."

"Yes, they have. A long time. It would be most unfortunate if anything were to befall them….the king's own son and his nephew…"

I had heard enough of the snake's soft, poisoned words, seen enough of the way his gaze kept flicking up and down, as if he was trying to undress me with his eyes. I turned on my heel and went back into the dark corridors, feeling him watching me the entire way.

I paused outside the door of my chamber, still half-believing that some creature of my nightmares would spring on me, wondering where the sun was, how I would ever find my way through this darkness of fear and uncertainty. I closed my eyes and leaned my head on the doorframe, willing away these black thoughts.

Then I stood straight. I was not a common woman, I was the Lady of Rohan, and I had to be strong. Before Gríma could come creeping, I stepped inside, and closed the door. My nightmares would wait. I was not afraid of them. I was not afraid of a cage….I was a shieldmaiden. Fearless. Forged of bitterly cold steel.

--------------

I woke again in the grey light before morning, which suffused my chamber with a steel-like sheen. At first, I thought that the silence had woke me again, but then I heard the noise and clamor. Shouts and cries – of joy, of fear, or of death?

I would not run, but I must go. I had to be steel still, and if there was a battle, my people would look to me for strength. So I dressed in the long gown that I hated, and threw a fur mantle over my shoulders, then slid my feet into kidskin boots.

I emerged into a chaos of hurry and shouts and movement. Tossing my unkempt pale-golden hair over one shoulder, I joined the flow and presently came to the courtyard.

It was overflowed with horses, and men smelling of horses, and banners of horses flying green against a sky stained a deep rose. The sun was barely risen in the east, and the morning chill made me glad for my mantle. So was this it? Had the Riders returned?

A Rider – I thought his name was Éothain, one of Éomer's for sure – made a bow to me and said, "My lady!" but other than that, there was too much confusion for anyone to look at me. I slid through the presses, dodging between horses and men speaking loudly. There was a terrible feeling growing inside me.

Then all of a sudden, there was a tall figure before me, his hand on the bridle of a smoky-grey stallion, a white plume flying from his helmet in the soft dawn breeze. His face was ashen and cold as he dismounted, and lifted down another, crumpled and bent.

My breath went out of me as if at a blow. For this tall, grim rider was my brother, and the other, the silent one, his face even paler, was my cousin.

"Men!" Éomer bellowed, in the voice that made you remember that he was now, in truth, the Third Marshal of the Mark. "Take the prince to the healers, at once!"

As he had commanded, his _éored_ surrounded him and Théodred, lifting him onto a stretcher and carrying him quickly away. I stared at them, transfixed in my horror, as they pulled a blanket over him to hide the deep, ghastly wound in his stomach. Was this not just what I had feared?

"Éomer!" Damn with protocol, with tradition, I could not help myself. To lose one of them would be horrid, but both would be more than I could bear. "Are you all right?"

He turned toward me slowly, scarcely seeing me. I knew my brother well enough to tell that he was still far away, recounting the battle blow for blow in his mind, attempting to understand what might have gone wrong.

"Éowyn." He stepped forward, and rested his leather-gloved hands on my shoulders. "I am glad to see you." But that was all; he was far too distracted to care. With a brief nod, he touched my hand quickly to his lips, then moved past and followed his men, and the stretcher that bore my cousin. I noticed that he moved with a curious stiffness.

I stood there, forgotten in the madness, no longer alone, but what good did that do me? Théodred could not have fallen, could not be wounded. He and Éomer had jousted a thousand times in the practice yard, and Théodred had held his own even when the arms-master had sent half the éored after him. He was the Second Marshal of the Mark. And now, no longer. My brother would have become the Third.

_That is not possible. _My mind tried to guard itself with desperate defiance. _Théodred cannot have fallen..._

But in my heart, I knew something had gone wrong. It would not have taken much – a slip of the shield, a parry a second too late. And then that hooked iron blade would have come up, and torn through leather and iron mail, into flesh.

"Théodred," I whispered.

I hated feeling so helpless. I wanted to go with them, and sew up Théodred's wound with my own hands, but I was a woman, and therefore, no doubt they thought I was too fragile. Perhaps they remembered the way I cried and cried when Father died. I had not let one tear pass my eye since then. It is far easier when you can't feel anything at all.

--------------

They sent for me later that day, when they had cleaned him enough, or perhaps when they thought there was nothing more to do, and I ought to see him before he died. So I went, holding my head high, refusing to acknowledge the sidelong, sorrowful looks that the guards gave me. Théodred was beloved by the King, or had been, and he was great friends with Éomer, despite the fact that he was much older than both of us. He was always so chivalrous to scullery maids and great lords alike.

_They cannot take him away. No one would be so cruel. _I hurried up the stone steps, and into a low room that smelled pungently of sickness.

My cousin lay there, face beaded with sweat, eyes glazed and unseeing. There was a crust of blood on his face, and my brother sat beside him, tending a silent vigil. He looked up grimly when I came in, and shook his head slightly.

I would not think. I would not accept this. I would not let Théodred slip away, but he was going quickly, and I could not bring him back. So I sat beside Éomer, and we were silent for a long time, staring down at Théodred, watching as he slipped away.

Éomer took my hand, and squeezed it gently. He was trying to offer comfort, I knew, as Théodred had been as a second brother to me, not a cousin. Éomer was trying to comfort me because he knew that there was no way he could recover.

"What happened to him?" Inside, my heart might be breaking, but my voice was still calm, controlled.

"Orcs." Éomer's face was grim. "And yet, at the same time, not. They were more of the goblins that we have heard of. We found him at the Fords with many other dead men. They were greatly outnumbered. I thought he would die before we could ever reach Meduseld."

I looked at him, and in his face I saw the same uncertainty I felt. He worried about me, about our uncle Théoden and his irreversible slide, about the candied venom that the snake breathed into his ear. But it was easier for him. He was a man, soon to be the King's heir if our cousin died. He was the Third Marshal, leader of the Riders of Rohan. It was expected of him to fight, to ride, to show the world his valor.

As for me, it was my lot to stay home and watch, always waiting, waiting for the coming of the news I dreaded. I had to smile, to keep house, to see that the fire was stoked and the food ready for the returning men.

"You do not know how helpless I feel, Éomer," I found myself saying. "All the time, while you are gone, I must wait, never knowing what has happened to you, or any of the brave men that other women wait for. You know I can ride, and fight. I am a shieldmaiden of Rohan. Let me join you."

He smiled slightly, wrenched momentarily from his dark thoughts, and touched my cheek. "Éowyn, I have no cause to doubt your valor, or your courage. No man of Rohan does. You are the bright beacon of hope that brings us homeward. But that is the way it has always been. It would be sad indeed if this Enemy were so inexorable that even the women and children of the Riddermark had to fight."

"What if it were you?" I asked him, staring at my cousin's deathbed. "What if you were the one that had to stay behind, knowing that your country's fate could well be decided? I know you, Éomer. You are a man of hot blood and quick action. It would drive you out of your mind."

Éomer frowned slightly. "Think no more on it, Éowyn," he said, and his words were meant to comfort me, but they only further froze my dark heart. I was not sure now that any could find it, not even myself.

I stepped back from him. "Think no more on you, and the peril which you encounter every day, and the way our father was butchered by Orcs? Would you have me be like our mother Théodwyn, destroyed by grief, forgotten, treated by everyone as someone to pity, before dying friendless and alone?"

Éomer stood as well, and took a step toward me, clearly eager to mend whatever fault he believed he had caused. He still moved stiffly, almost gingerly, and a dark fear shot through me. "Éowyn, you would never waste away. Never. You are too strong, a fair steel blade."

His words were kind, sweet, but I had no patience with them. "Oh? Steel breaks, steel shatters, steel can fail you when you need it the most." I could not help glancing sidelong at my cousin where he lay dying, and a sob choked in my throat, but I would not let it mature. "I would not dishonor Théodred by having cross words here, and now. If you desire me to tell you more of it, I would, but not now. Not here."

And with that, I gathered up my skirts and whirled away across the stone floor. He reached for me, and I saw in his eyes that he felt the same pain. Perhaps it was unfair of me.

But then, it was unfair of them. A thousand times, when I was younger, they let me take a blunt sword, and practice in the yard with the boys. I bested them many times, which led to grumbling from their masters about being so poor that a woman could overmatch them. I never understood this. Why should a woman not be as strong as a man?

Then I grew older, and Mother died, and suddenly Rohan was without a queen, without a lady of any sort. And so I had to step back, to gown myself demurely and smile sweetly, and wait, always wait.

I left the hall which smelled of sickness, and ignored my brother's pleading eyes that watched my back. The grey morning had grown to chill, cloud-choked afternoon, and a restless breeze swept the rubbish of life from the street. I walked past it unseeing, head held high, determined to show the world that Éowyn, Lady of Rohan, might crack, but it would never see her break.

I wanted a respite from questions and probing eyes and the constant reminder that I was regarded as inferior. I climbed into the winding stairs to Meduseld, past the golden posts that guarded its doors, and into the long hall of my uncle. I wished to tell him many things, and plead with him to remember his life as it was.

It was quiet here, heavy with sorrow and memory and the pervasive dullness of mind which had enveloped the King. Even the tapestries were limp and lifeless. The one bearing Eorl the Young looked as if our first king had been weighted with melancholy when he rode to the Battle of the Field of Celebrant, not fey and fearless as he must certainly have been.

The lore of Rohan was filled with many tales of fair-haired Men, and great steeds, and wise kings, and green banners flown streaming from tall ashwood lances. I was a daughter of that, an heir to the House of Eorl, and yet I was a serving-woman in my own hall, reduced to this.

"Uncle? My lord?" I did not know why I hoped for an answer; there had never been one before. "Éomer is returned with Théodred. Your son is gravely wounded, and it is believed that he will not survive." My voice wavered perilously close to a sob.

He did not answer, gazing back at me with blank eyes. He leaned heavily on a twisted cane of black with a carved handle of ivory, and he seemed withered and bent as one far greater in years. Whatever that worm had done, it was killing him slowly.

I sighed, and knelt before him, for he was still my king and liege lord, I pressed my forehead to his ashen hands, wishing that I could give my own life to him. For he was the king, and needed it most, and I was just his serving-maid, all bond of kinship forgotten, there simply to wait on him. Perhaps he could use it more than I.

I had thought that we were alone, thought that perhaps I could spill my troubles to my uncle even if he did not hear or heed them.

I was wrong.

There came that slithering sound again, and then Gríma was there – false counselor, how I loathed him. He watched me with those queer unblinking eyes of his. His garb was dark, and seemed to have been long unwashed.

"My lady. You seem…distressed."

I stood. The glint in his eye that I had seen earlier, on the balcony, had returned, but far stronger, desirous, almost. It would not be proper, not even close – and yet when had this worm paid any heed to protocol?

"Get back," I told him.

"Many times have you rejected me, Lady Éowyn." He showed no signs of leaving. The one person who could help me, who could care about me – my uncle – sat motionless, eyes far distant, lips moving to the words of some half-remembered dream.

"And why?" Gríma continued, stepping closer, running a slow finger down my shoulder to the neck of my gown. "I would care for you well, build you a hut or a keep or a castle, whichever you desire. When the dark times come, clinging to a raft might save you from being swept away in the water."

"The dark times have come. They have been over me ever since I was born. Now leave me." My voice was as imperious and icy-cold as I could make it.

His eyes glittered like the polished eyes of some jeweled snake, but colder, darker, infinitely more dangerous. He stood there, watching me, and made no move to obey.

"You are so fair, Lady Éowyn. And yet so cold, so bitterly cold." He took yet another step closer, pressing upon me in the murk of the deserted hall. No one wished to waste time or talent waiting upon a failing king, a king that was privately believed to be beyond hope. No one except me.

My eyes flamed. "I told you to leave." If he took another step, I would strike him.

"And I heard you, my lady. Many times. A man grows weary of so many refusals."

The snake undulated gently closer. I could almost see the black film he would leave on the polished flagstones of the floor. I reached for the dagger I had had last night, but I had left it in my quarters.

"I know what you feel, my lady." He was almost on top of me. "The cage…you fear it, do you not? To be trapped forever, to waste away and die, without glory, without honor, forgotten-about?

"I fear nothing." A lie, if a brave one. There was nowhere for me to go; I could only hope to keep him off until he lost interest, and glided away to whisper more poison in my uncle's ear.

Those sly eyes lit with a vile mockery of mirth. "Ah, you are brave, and always you deny it. Come, my lady. These dark halls tell on a man's heart, make him wish for company –"

He stopped, staring over my shoulder. I whirled, and saw that I was not alone after all. Slowly, his eyes fixed on Gríma and flaming with rage, my brother Éomer stepped forward.

"So you are – are returned, my lord," said the Wormtongue, with a passable show of obeisance. "I had not known that, in the dark tidings of Prince Théodred's injury – "

"Silence, snake." I had never heard such fury in Éomer's voice. "Whenever you speak, your lies twine about you. I am returned indeed, and I tell you – if you stalk my sister's steps an instant more, you will find that I will stalk yours, with steel in my hand. If ever again you try to trap her, or entice her, you shall find that the steel will fall, quick and mercilessly."

For some reason, this broke my uncle from his stupor. He sat up, making a wet sort of noise in his throat, as if attempting to remember speech, and then he spoke.

"Who are you, to threaten death to my most loyal counselor?" he said, gazing straight at Éomer without seeing him at all. "Ever Gríma has guided me rightly, and I treasure his words beyond all else."

"I am your nephew, my lord." There was pain almost equal to my own in Éomer's words. "The son of your beloved sister Théodwyn, the boy you took in and swore to raise as your own. Ever have my sword Gúthwinë, and my words of counsel, been at your service. And I tell you now – throw aside this darkness which has covered you. Banish this worm from your sight and your councils. And all will pay homage to you, as the Lord of the Mark that you are."

This thing which wore my uncle's face and voice, and yet was not him, spoke in the cracked, peevish voice of an old, petty man brooding on many slights he has suffered. "What? What? Banish Gríma? He who would die for me? How dare you, Rider. I tell you now, forget this. Swear that you will never assail him, openly or in secret, with arms or with words."

Éomer gazed back at him, his clear grey eyes meeting without hesitation the blurred, rheumy ones of our uncle. Then he said, his voice calm but heavy with sorrow, "I cannot obey you, my lord. For it is the Worm's voice that speaks within you, not your own."

Théoden half-rose from his throne, and again he spoke in those awful, screeching tones. "What? What? Go away then, there will be no place, no sanctuary for you here. Go about with that lot of horseboys you call Riders, and we shall all be better off for being rid of you. Yes! Yes! Go, I tell you!"

Éomer bowed stiffly, but I knew his mind, and loved him dearly after the fashion of my frozen heart, and I felt how much this must have stung. Without looking at me, he said, "Come, Éowyn. I will not leave you alone to the mercies of this creature."

I followed him from the hall, and outside, he looked at me. "Why?" he said desperately. "Why is everything sane fled from us, deserted us, twisted into poisoned and empty lies?"

"I do not know." I realized then that both of us were suffering in different ways, and that these dark days had tainted everything. "I'm sorry, Éomer." For what, I did not know. But I did not want him to go away again, he who was my only comfort in this house woven thick with lies.

"I'm sorry too, Éowyn," he answered, staring out across the horizon. Mist embroidered the fringes of Edoras as the afternoon faded toward evening, and there was a glow like the heart of a flame bathing the high peaks of the mountains.

After a moment more, I gave in, and went to him, and rested my head on his broad, armored shoulder. Perhaps he did not understand me, and I did not understand him, but we were brother and sister, and at least we remained in our right minds. I loved him and I did not want him to leave, and I knew that he must and did my best to cool myself toward him so the sting would not be so great, but now I missed him and wished to come to him, a small sister creeping to her elder brother again, as she had in the nights when dark dreams troubled her and she had no mother to comfort her, for her mother had died of grief.

Éomer sighed, and laid his head on mine, and we stood there for a long time, silent, waiting as the mist crawled up to cover the buildings. And then still, we did not move, but stood, watching as the glow died on the crown of the mountain, and night came creeping behind to cover it.


	2. Éomer – Strangers and Spies

CHAPTER TWO

Éomer – Strangers and Spies

If there was one way I could have killed the Wormtongue, without arousing my uncle's torn, deluded mind and making him call for his guards, I would have. As it was, my fingers itched, burning for the weight of my sword in my hand. Éowyn and I had long agreed that the creature was despicable.

Once, very long ago, he had been respectable enough, even if he had a disturbing, oily sheen to his soft voice, and crept through the halls at night spying upon the unwary. Then he had grown ever more like a snake. Each day I expected to see his fleshless lips curl back to reveal venomous fangs beneath.

What had he done to the king, the lord I had served faithfully in all the twenty-eight years of my life? My uncle Théoden would never speak to me so, a querulous old man, and order me away. He had not even recognized me. He did not know my name, or my face, so like my father Éomund's.

For the first time, I understood, partially, the pain my sister must be feeling. For she was the one that stayed, and had to mind an old man in the winter of his days. I knew how this must burn in her. She had never desired to be like other women. She always wished for more.

I did not hold this against her, for she was a daughter of our father true enough, and the same, unquenchable hatred of Orcs and all dark things, the hatred which had killed him, burned like flame beneath her pale, cold shell. I had felt it often, and it was for this that I rode so often, and so far.

At the moment, the land of Rohan was caught on a perilous balance. We had heard reports of the Enemy massing again in his tower of shadow, even the dread whisper that his great weapon was abroad once more. We had no open war with him – yet.

I knew Orcs well. I knew their many foul sigils, and even some of their twisted, coarse speech, like glass breaking upon a stone floor. Often, my men and I had disguised ourselves and spoken as one of them, only to rise in the night and slaughter them.

The Orcs of the Dark Tower always bore a fiery eye as a standard, the symbol of their master Sauron, the Lord of the Rings. And these Orcs that had been harrying Rohan did not.

They bore the White Hand of Saruman. Saruman, who we had long considered a friend.

This betrayal rankled in my flesh even worse than a poisoned arrow. The Rohirrim and Saruman had no quarrel that I knew of. His fortress of Isengard lay near enough to our own lands that we were aware of him, but for many ages, he had remained there, in the high black pillar of Orthanc, working his sorceries and studying his esoteric discipline.

And now, he opposed us, sending out these misshapen, evil-bred creatures to wreak havoc on our lands. The éored and I were engaged in constant battle against them.

When I left Éowyn, she stood still upon the balcony, gazing out at the sun's fire, long quenched. I stepped away from her gently, but she did not seem to notice, or care. She was far away, deep in her own mind. She was my sister, my own flesh and blood, and we were close, but now, I had no idea what she could be thinking.

I hurried through the deepening shadows, nodding briefly when my men called out to me, and entered a different door into the quiet depths of Meduseld. After a swift glance to ascertain that no one was there, I ascended the wooden stairs to my own chamber, as lavish as befitted a nephew of the King.

I disliked so much opulence – I was a warrior born and bred, and the hard ground was to me far preferable to a soft feather-bed. But there were some things that I must deal with – on the borders, ravaging Orcs, and here, an overly-comfortable chamber. It was an odd paradox. I almost laughed.

Making sure the door was securely shut, I set about business, wincing as I struggled to extricate myself from my mail and leather armor. I had not wished to alarm Éowyn, but Théodred had not been the only one hurt in the battle at the Fords.

It seemed minor enough, but I well knew the vile substances that tainted Orc-blades, and I would take no chances. I grimaced as I unbound a length of stained linen from my side. Already the wound smelled foul.

I reached for the cask of wine that sat in the corner, and drew a brimming goblet. It was a bitter red, fortifying, but very potent. I drank it all in three gulps.

Then I set to work. Some of the flesh had festered, and needed to be excised. I steeled myself and used my small knife, seared in the fire first to blacken and purify the blade. The wine dulled the pain but little. I gritted my teeth and willed my hand steady.

The Orc that had dealt this had surprised me, I thought, assessing my wound with a dispassionate clarity. He had come at me with a vicious overhead strike, and naturally, I had raised my sword to fend him off. Then his other hand whipped out a twisted black dagger, and caught me in the side before I could quite lower my blade.

The mail and leather had stayed the worst of it, or even now, I might lie beside my cousin, caught in the throes of approaching death. I had brought my blade up in a swift steel arc, cleaving the Orc from hip to neck. Then he had fallen, and I had called out again for Théodred.

I reached for the basin of scalding-hot water, and cleaned the wound again, biting my lip bloody so I would not cry out in pain. The flesh was an angry red by now, but at least I had done away with the infected part.

I took up a long, curved horn needle, and a length of waxed thread. This was always the hardest part. I could have gone to the healers, but no doubt even now my sister was there with Théodred, and I did not want to have her know. She suffered silently under enough of a burden.

My hand was shaking. I glared at it until, through sheer force of will, I steadied it again. Then I pierced my own flesh with the needle, drawing the thread through, and back, and through again. I drank more wine, and tasted the coppery tang of my own blood mixed with it.

At last, it was finished. I tied the knot, snipped the thread, and burnt the stained linen, watching as it writhed and disintegrated in the flame. Then, with a great effort, I rose, and found more, and wrapped it carefully around my side.

I pulled a long, shapeless tunic over my head, and belted it with leather. Then I carefully cleaned the room, giving no hint of any injury, any weakness. No one would ever know that I had taken a wound, or that I had healed it myself, never speaking of it.

Another goblet of wine would steady my nerves. I reached for it, filled it, drank heavily, sinking back onto the mound of furs before my fire. Far below, in the dining hall, my men laughed and jested and opened casks of ale, hoping to celebrate in this rare moment when they could.

I did not have the heart to join them, and I hoped that my melancholy this night would not ruin their merrymaking. I slumped back on the fur, staring into the flames.

Would I go, as the thing that was not my uncle had ordered me to? Did I dare to defy him, or would the Worm call in his army of sycophants to drag me away?

I lay there for a long time, half-awake, knowing that I should be with Théodred or my men. I was a leader who they looked up to, I could not be aloof, I had to share their pain, their fear, and their joy. Otherwise, they would cease to look upon me as a man to whom they could trust their lives.

With a groan, I hauled myself off the fur, reeling only slightly, and placed the unfinished wine on a table. I went to the door and down the stairs, following the sounds of raucous celebration.

I stepped from the hallway and into a maelstrom of noise. My men laughed and toasted each other, making a game of the most ridiculous things they could come up with. My faithful Éofor commended my good Éothain for having the filthiest mail, to which Éothain replied jauntily that it attracted women who liked such an experienced fellow.

Then they saw me, and the noise in the room died slightly. Éothain hurriedly removed his boots from the carved statue they had been resting on, and turned to me. "My lord Éomer! We did save some of the choicest ale for you!"

"No need, I have had enough." I was fortunate that they did not know, that they had not seen the blood staining the steel links of my mail red. "Carry on."

Éothain frowned. "My lord, what is it?"

I had to believe in them – they were my own éored, and they had ridden with me for the better part of five years. If I could still not entrust them with my dark secrets, I was a poor leader indeed.

"Trouble with my uncle, and the Worm." Try as I might, my voice was not cool and calm; my fierce hatred of the creature colored my tone. "I found him with my sister in the hall of our uncle. He does not know me, and he even commanded me to leave again, so soon."

Éothain winced at the pain he must have heard, raw in my voice. "He doesn't mean it, Lord Éomer. You know that your uncle depends on you. It's the Worm's doing."

My temper blazed up sudden and fast as tinder soaked with oil. There was nothing I could do to stop it. "_I know! _Every day the king withers, and my sister retreats further and further from me, and now my cousin lies _dying! _With every breath, the Worm whispers poison, makes my uncle turn me away, scorn me as 'a Rider' that he does not even know!"

I realized that I was shouting, and my men were staring at me, the comfort that their horns of ale offered quite forgotten in the face of my sudden wrath. I forced myself to be calm, cursing myself for losing control so easily.

I took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. You did nothing. But this damnable household slips further into ruin every day, and by heaven, this decline will drive me mad."

There was a silence from the éored. Then Éothain put a hand on my shoulder.

"You've borne it admirably, Lord Éomer," he said, stoutly supportive. "A dozen lesser men would have already gone out of their minds, and yet you manage to think of us, and defending the borders. Now here, have some ale."

He pressed on me some of the ale he had, as promised, saved for me. I could not refuse, and drank with them, and laughed at their bawdy jests and rollicking stories. Then, as soon as I could, I escaped up the stairs in darkness, and collapsed onto my bed to rest my burning eyes.

-----------

I woke the next morning to darkness, a bank of thunderheads, and the ominous sense of a brewing storm – in more ways than one. The Riders and I had to go forth again. Our respites were few and far between, and when they did come, they were no longer than a night. It was essential, with the threat of war encroaching ever farther on our land, that the borders never be neglected, not even for a day.

The éored that rode the borders now would return to patrolling the plains. My men and I had the most dangerous job – we were the first line of defense between Rohan and an Orc attack. If an ambush party got past us, and came to Edoras otherwise unhindered, it would be our fault.

That thought spurred my groggy brain into wakefulness. I rolled out of bed. Although my wound hurt, it was not unbearable. I shrugged into smallclothes, mail, and armor, and fastened my belt around my waist, sliding my sword Gúthwinë into proper place at my side.

My men were mostly awake, although I had to roust a few stragglers along. I emerged into the cold morning ready to ride, my silver helm with its white crest beneath my arm.

But before I left, I had something very important to tend to. While my éored set to work, either leading horses from the warm stable and saddling them, or slinging rolls of provisions onto their backs, I left them. I would not be long.

I went first to the house where my cousin lay. It was to my wonder when I discovered that he was not yet dead, that he hung desperately onto life by the merest thread. He was delirious and dreaming, calling out for his mother, Théoden's beloved wife, who had died giving him birth.

"Théodred," I called him, hoping that the sound of his name and my voice would summon him back from the shadows that clustered about him so thickly. He did not answer, but sighed, and blood bubbled from his cracked lips.

"Rest in peace, cousin," I whispered, knowing that he did not hear. The healers had retreated to mix more potions and poultices in a vain hope of curing him, and I was alone. "Do not worry. I will carry on where you could not."

He stared at me blankly, blindly. Crying was not something I was accustomed to doing, but even so, I had to blink back the sudden threat of tears. I wanted to stay here, to be with my cousin when he died, to protect my sister from Gríma, to hope futilely that Théoden would be renewed. But that would be to wallow in pity, and hopelessness, and I had to ride, had to fight. I was the Third Marshal of the Riddermark now. I had many tasks ahead of me.

I left, and hurried down the winding stone path to the courtyard where my men had nearly finished their preparations. One handed me the reins of my stallion, Firefoot, and I nodded a brief thanks. Firefoot whickered, and I patted his neck. "Steady, boy. We'll soon be off."

I checked that I had provisions, a quiver full of arrows, and a fresh string for my bow in addition to Gúthwinë. My sword had been sharpened and sharpened, until it had the liquid glimmer of steel too dangerous to touch, even lay a finger on.

My men gathered about me like the fringes of a storm cloud, ascertaining their certainty, their readiness. My éored was one of the best in Rohan; I had no doubts about their strength, their valor, their skill in battle.

"My lord Éomer," said Éothain breathlessly, snatching my arm as I passed him. "Word came last night. Orcs have entered our lands. They are running hard across the high plains."

My anger blazed, but with a great effort I forced it back. "Who rode the borders? Who let them pass?"

"I do not know. It's said that they came up through the plains, from the east. They run at great speed, it is said. One man was sent quickly from the border patrol to tell us. They would have challenged them, they said, but they were too few, and there were many foes."

I frowned, quickly calculating their passage in my mind. "To judge from where the patrol was last night – the Orcs must be near Fangorn by now, close to Eastfold. I will not let them pass through this land unmolested. We ride after them."

Éothain hesitated. "Are – are you sure, my lord? These were more of the Man-like Orcs, much stronger than the usual ilk."

"I am sure. The filth will not find Rohan an easy target."

There was a pause, then Éothain nodded. "As you will, my lord." He turned away and set about strapping crossbow and quiver to his own horse.

A messenger came running down from the Golden Hall, high seat of kings, breathless and flushed. "My lord Éomer – quickly, before you depart, hear well the words of the king!"

_The Worm, you mean. _But I could not disregard the words completely, not yet. So I turned to the messenger, who was a young man with the first wisps of a yellow beard clinging to his cheeks. "Well?" I said brusquely. "Out with it!"

The messenger bowed hastily. "My lord. Word has reached the king's ears of these Orcs that entered Rohan. He tells you that you are not to go after them."

A cold fire began to fill me. The Worm had him, had him bound and tied. Théoden hated Orcs and their filth as violently as I did, and as my father Éomund had. In his better days, had he learned that Orcs were running freely across our lands, he would be the first to pick up his sword and lead the charge.

I took a deep breath to steady myself. It was not my uncle's word, I reminded myself. I could not hold it against him. "And did the king say why this might be?"

The messenger swallowed. "No, my lord. The sound of Riders making ready woke him briefly from his – from his state, and he told me to tell you that on no account were you to chase them. Better to lose peasant-folk than Riders, he said."

If Gríma had been within my sight, and my sword had been in hand, there would have been nothing to stop me cutting him down like a dog. I breathed deeply, flexing my fists in their gloves, willing peace, peace, calm. I had to do something I had hoped never to do. I had to openly defy my king and lord, with steel in hand, leading others into the same treason.

I turned to the messenger. "I am sorry. I do not believe that I can do that."

He frowned slightly. "What do you mean, Éom – my lord?"

"I will not grant these beasts the mercy of a swift journey. Let one band through, and the next moment we shall be flooded. Peasants, Riders, even messengers – they shall make no distinction in those they slaughter. War is coming. I would not sit here passively and let them make the first move."

His mouth opened and closed like a fish. "My lord – the king's express will – "

Damnation, but couldn't he see how hard this was already? I loved Théoden as a father, and before the Worm's whispers had corrupted his mind, he had been a proud man, a warrior, as strong and as mighty as befit a king.

And now I had to betray him.

"Stop me if you will," I said, nodding to the shortsword he wore by his side. "But when we are finished with you, we will ride, and swiftly. These Orcs could just as easily decide to come to Edoras."

He bowed, his eyes wide. "Yes, my lord."

Then, obviously fearing that I would draw my own sword and make an end of him, he turned and fled. I sighed, watching him go. I had not meant to threaten him, or terrify him, but this had gone too far. I was desperate.

Then there was a sudden silence among the éored, and for a horrid moment I thought that the Worm himself had come, to twist us and dissuade us from the course that we must take. But then I realized that their silence was one of reverence, not repulsion.

I turned. My sister stood there, gowned in white, her long golden hair hanging combed and gleaming down her back. Although her eyes were red, as if she had been weeping, she was calm. Or, more like, she had simply slept poorly. Éowyn never cried.

With commendable steadiness, Éowyn said, "Farewell, brother. Ride against the Orcs as you must, and return swiftly."

I stepped to her and kissed her cold brow. "I will go safely."

Those brief words finished, I turned away, and giving the command to mount, I put on my helmet, and swung astride Firefoot. The éored streamed about me, a mighty current of men and horses. I gave the horse his head, and rode out the gate of Edoras at a gallop, my white plume streaming in the wind of my speed.

The éored followed me like the point of a spear, and we fanned out across the broad plains. The crisp air hit us in the face and tore the last shreds of sleepiness from us. Edoras receded quickly behind us.

I looked back. Over the swift-moving mass that was my éored, I faintly made out the slender, upright figure of Éowyn, watching us go. Even here, I could see the pain and desperation on her face. Always being left behind, to wait and worry, must be killing her slowly.

_I'm sorry, _I wanted to tell her. I knew my sister's talent with a blade; in truth, she was as skilled as any of my Riders, and had even beaten me once or twice when we had sparred in the practice yard. But that was a long time ago, when I was nineteen and she only fifteen. We had long since left those days behind.

Then the éored mounted a hill, and thundered down the other side like a wave, and suddenly Edoras was gone. I rode in the front, feeling the wind and the fresh sunlight on my face, but in truth my heart was dark. It had been hard to leave again, knowing that my uncle was a dotard, my sister was stalked by the worm, and that my cousin would die without my knowing, without me there.

--------------

We rode hard for all of that day, following the trail of beaten grass and broken things that the Orcs had left. Their hob-nailed boots had torn the ground to shreds, and it bore many signs of their heavy-footed passing. Here and there we found a stain of black blood, or a cracked scimitar. It seemed that they were in such haste that stealth was of little importance.

My wound dulled to a throb, and I did my best to put it out of my mind. Yet even as the _éored _rode, hooves thundering, dust rising in the wake of our passage, it would not stop twinging, reminding me of its presence. If it came to battle, and I had no doubt that it would, it had best not hinder me, or I would be dead.

Near evenfall, the _éored _and I drew rein in the shadow of a thick copse of trees. The ground here was as yet unmolested by Orcish tracks, so for the moment, we were ahead of them. I dismounted, went among the men, and gave my faithful, weary Firefoot a drink from a cold stream and a pat on the neck.

"This is Eastfold, my lord," Éofor announced, taking a roll of parchment from his saddlebag and unrolling it on a wide tree-stump. His finger traced the blue ink lines that marked the boundaries of Rohan, with cities and forests filled in as far as the cartographer knew, and dragons drawn where he did not. "The scout believed they were making in the direction of Fangorn, and they've been running hard, so, to guess from where they were yesterday, they're most like about – there."

His finger slid slightly downwards, from the dot that marked our position to an otherwise unremarkable path wending up near the thick tangles of Fangorn.

"Nightfall," I said, straightening up. "I want to ensure that they are there, so take a drink, and a bit of bread if you want, and then we're off. I mean to find these Orcs."

"You wish to let them know that we follow?" said Éofor, frowning.

"Yes." I stared into the darkling West. "We will stop, wait, and then creep on them."

From his expression, Éofor did not know what to make of this plan, but he nodded and said nothing. Then he stood atop the stump and bellowed, "By order of the Lord Éomer, we're to set out and track the Orcs this very evening! Take a bit of water if you will, and some bread and meat, and then we're off."

There was a general murmur of assent. Rubbing a hand across my eyes to rid them of weariness, I went back to Firefoot and pulled some strips of dried meat from the saddlebag. This I washed down with a bit of old bread and several draughts from the stream.

My _éored _was quiet. The day of hard riding was not unusual, but their thoughts traced dark paths similar to mine. They thought of the failing king they served, and their Lady. For they loved Éowyn nearly as well as I did, and would not see harm come to her while they were away.

After nightfall, I gave the order to mount up again. Then, riding as fast as we could, but silently, we turned down the stream-bank and rode south.

Above us, the waxing moon rode low and silver in the sky, and stars like chips of diamond swam in the darkness. I rode in the lead, hunched low, a leather helm on my head instead of my silver one, which would catch the moonlight and be as good as a beacon for our coming. Gúthwinë was half-drawn in its sheath, and behind me, the éored came as a long trail of shadow.

Too soon, we saw them. They were near to Fangorn all right. The cursed forest rose in a black cloud to the east, spreading away in thick tangles across the land. Beneath its branches, there was noise, and clamor, and the sound of many harsh voices. They had seen us.

I drew up and stopped, a long bowshot if any Orc cared to try. "Ring them," I ordered in a low voice, and at once the éored spread out, drawing a noose about the Orcs. There was little they could do to stop us, as we were too far away to be reached with an arrow.

I dismounted again, and ordered watch-fires lit, many of them, so small pinpricks of light flared to life on the dark prairie. At once the arrows started to come, long black streaks hissing from beneath the eaves of the wood, as the Orcs attempted to surprise one of us silhouetted against them. But we were quick, and cunning, and stayed well out of sight. The arrows fell five or ten feet short, although one particularly long shot whistled just past Éothain's shoulder.

When at last the volley ceased, I decided to chance becoming a bit more daring. The _éored _split into many small groups, and crawled up silently through the dead grass. They rose quick as snakes from the darkness, and struck out at any Orc unwary enough to stray far from its fellows.

"Lord Éomer?" It was another of the _éored, _a man called Gárulf, a big broad fellow with an amiable face and a red-orange beard. "Is that wise?"

"I do not know," I said, staring at the fires that the Orcs had lit in answer to ours. "But I do know that the filth will pass no farther."

When the men came back (or did not, as the Orcs had cut some down) I ordered the fringe of the éored drawn back, and the fires extinguished. We lay low, hidden in the grass, absolutely silent. Presently the Orcs began to speak. I heard them, their voices faint but clear.

"The Horse-boys must have left," said one, in a deep, rasping growl. "Perhaps their little trick didn't work so well 's they thought. We ought to have scouts out, making sure they don't come back."

"Oh ho, you so eager to get us butchered, Uglúk?" said another, in a high shrilling voice. "No doubt that's just what the cursed lot wants, us to commit to an attack, and then they slice us to bits."

"I wouldn't hesitate sacrificing your Morgul-rats, Grishnákh," growled the first.

There was a fight, or at least a loud disagreement, then. The Orcs and the stronger ones – they needed a name, _Uruks _seemed to suit – argued, their voices rising discordant into the still night. Once or twice there was even a clash of steel as the dispute turned particularly violent.

I lay in the grass watching all this, feeling no hint of sleepiness, only a cold, tense awareness that they were there, and they had not been cut down yet. I thought that they would decide to go on, as Orcs had ever loved the night and loathed the Sun, but it seemed that they had been pressed hard, and needed a small respite.

The éored was spread about me, waiting, I knew, for me to make the first move. Not yet. Not quite. Just behind, the horses were tethered out of sight and smell of the Orcs, so they would not spook, and given hay and water. There was no sound in the night now except for the lonely crying of the wind, and the heated mutters still coming from the Orcs.

It seemed to me that the forest of Fangorn responded to their presence. Surely it must have been my eyes deceiving me, but it seemed to me that long branches like fingers crept across the earth, and long tendrils of ivy slid out to trip the Orcs, and drops of water fell to make the fires smolder and hiss. Then again, the Rohirrim had long considered the place cursed, and entered there not at all for fear that they would never be seen again.

The night crept onwards on turtle feet. I must have fallen asleep briefly, for when I opened my eyes a short while later the night was greyer, and some of the stars had begun to fade. There was a hint of rose in the east. Dawn was coming.

"My lord Éomer – when?" Gárulf whispered.

"Soon. At first light."

We rose, still silent, still hunched low, and slipped off through the grass to make our horses ready. Perhaps they sensed the urgency in their task as strongly as we did, for they did not whicker, and did not stamp, standing as still as stone as we untied them from their pickets and swung up.

The sunrise came, splicing pale rays over the grey hills mounded in its path, and as it came, so did we.

We caught the Orcs completely by surprise, charging from nowhere down the slope, swords unsheathed and burning with flame when the new-risen sun caught the steel. They barely had enough time to reach for their weapons before we were on them.

In an instant, the hollow was chaos, as swords met and rang, clashing and scraping in showers of sparks. I had a confused impression of Gárulf falling, mortally wounded, from his horse.

Then I lost sight of them all, and the battle took me. Firefoot plunged like a thing possessed through the scattering ranks of the Orcs, and Gúthwinë sang a vengeful song against the black steel of their swords. Parry and riposte, strike down and cleave up, I was a mad thing, utterly lost in the fury of battle.

Then a huge, hulking brute was before me. He stood at least seven feet, with skin black as jet and mouth open, fangs waiting to tear. Before I could think, I leapt from the saddle and landed like a cat, then slammed my sword upward to meet his vicious strike.

The monster and I danced, back and forth, our blows brutal, our swords meeting and clashing and tangling before darting apart again. I bared my teeth at him and screamed a wordless cry to match his own, uttered in the throaty growl I had heard speaking earlier.

I whipped my sword around, hard, into the side of his jaw. It ought to have been a fatal blow, but somehow the beast recovered. He spat blood full in my face, and I snarled at him as the sticky black flow dripped down my cheek.

I fell to one knee and spitted him like a pig, straight through the stomach, at the vulnerable juncture between breastplate and thigh-guard. He made a choked gargling noise, and then he fell.

His blood running down my face, I raised Gúthwinë like a spear and jammed it through his neck, to ensure that he would not rise again. The brute was dead already, but he had become a vent for my frustration, fear, anger. I stabbed him again, then whirled around to meet the strike of one of his fellows.

How long this went on, I could not say. I fought without clear reason, without any sort of strategy, and for some reason the gods protected me in my foolishness, and I did not fall. When at last I recovered some semblance of sanity, the Orcs were dead, and many of my _éored _as well.

"Lord Éomer!" It was Éothain, running to me. "Are you hurt?"

I wiped the foul blood off my face with my leather vambrace. "No. That's of the foe, not mine. How many?"

"Many," Éothain answered solemnly. "They're all dead, but they were a large force, and well-armed, and we paid dearly for it. And look. They were not just the Isengard Uruks, but orcs from the Black Land as well."

In his hand he held a tattered black banner emblazoned with an unmistakable symbol – the red Eye of Mordor. It was the tiding I had dreaded. It seemed that whether we willed it or no, the master of Barad-dûr had declared war on the Riddermark. And worse, we found the sigil of Saruman among the carcasses as well, the White Hand of Isengard, and then we knew for a certainty that the two towers had joined and set their will against us. My heart fell into a small cold lump.

There were many riderless horses, and these we gathered and herded to one side. My brave Firefoot had managed to survive when I had leapt in my heedless fury from his back, and I was grateful for this.

Next came a less pleasant task. We had to gather the bodies of our fallen comrades, and see the many, gruesome wounds which had stolen their lives. But I was a warrior, and knew much of death and mayhem. I was again glad that Éowyn was not allowed to ride with us, for I would not have wanted her to see such carnage. They may be beasts, and enemies, and never better than when dead, but they creep into your nightmares and haunt your path.

We cleared a patch of dead grass, and there we placed the corpses of the fallen. We closed swords and lances in cold hands, spoke a few words, and set a fire in their flesh, so that they might become ash, and travel on the wind across the plains of their beloved country.

Our hands and arms were stained with blood, dirt, and grass by the time this was done, but there was more work still to do. We gathered the dead Uruks and Orcs. It was a long and unpleasant work, but necessary; we would not leave the scene of slaughter in such ruin.

The remnants of the _éored _and I piled the bodies of the monsters in a high pyre. Then we kindled fire, and left them to burn, with far less ceremony that had been bestowed on our dead. The beasts did not even deserve the trouble we were taking for them.

The acrid smoke stung our eyes as we mounted up, and for a long time after, we could smell the stench of corruption on the wind. My long, sleepless vigil that night was making itself felt, but my mind had gone beyond normal sensations to a numb, cold, clear state, when nothing mattered besides the enemy, and my duty.


	3. Éowyn – Spirits and Starlight

CHAPTER THREE

Éowyn – Spirits and Starlight

That night, my dreams came to torture me.

I had spent the day with Théodred, holding his chill hand and whispering such prayers as I thought would ease his passing from this world to the next. I was spent with grief, and even though I wanted to cry for my cousin, I could not. My dry eyes had long forgotten how.

Éomer had left two men of his _éored _behind, men handpicked for their strength and loyalty, and they stayed with me, never close, but never far, never out of sight or earshot. When I sat at Théodred's bedside, they stood just outside the house. They were not my brother, but it eased my heart to have them there. I knew that Éomer still needed every sword he could muster, and to leave two behind for me was a great sign of his love and care for me.

At last, I had to leave, at least briefly. The guards had sent word that I was wanted by the king.

For a moment, a wild, beautiful moment, I allowed myself to hope. Some magic had been worked – Gríma's influence shattered – the king called for the woman who had been with him whenever he commanded it, who had sat at his side to tend to him.

Then the guards spoke the next word of the message, and my brief hope was shattered.

"For he is hungry, and bids you bring him his supper."

I was still no better than a serving-woman, another nameless maiden in a grey cloak that brought the king his meals and his wine, and wiped his mouth when he forgot to. I took a deep breath, kissed my cousin's bloody brow, and walked between the guards, head upright, back straight. For menial my roles might be, but still, I was determined to carry myself as befit the Lady of Rohan.

It was evening, and a chill wind tousled my hair, as the guards and I silently crossed the narrow streets of Edoras. Many shopkeepers were closing for the night, eager to hurry home to wife and children and the promise of a warm fire in the hearth.

They hailed me respectfully as I passed. "Evening, Lady Éowyn," from a grizzled wool-merchant. "Good health, my Lady," from a woman spinning outside her small hut. "I see the first star of the evening has risen, my fair Lady," from a young man who obviously fancied himself a poet.

With the guards at my back, I ascended the high steps of Meduseld. The first star had indeed risen, a low blue twinkle in the West, and the Moon was so bright that it nearly cast shadows. Darkness was sweeping in low and fast to steal away the light.

I paused at the topmost stair, and looked back behind me. I could not help but wonder how far Éomer had gotten in the space of one day's ride, and if he had called a halt to sleep, or if even now he pressed on, farther and farther, determined to find the Orcs. Knowing my brother, I thought that it was most likely the latter.

"Come on, my lady," said one of the guards respectfully, and I nodded coolly at him. The three of us crossed the shadows under the eaves, and they opened the heavy wooden door. Thanking them silently, I left them to wait, and entered the quiet hall alone.

Théoden was sitting more or less upright, watching my approach with bright eyes. They were almost the only light in the forsaken place, as all the torches had gone out, and no one had bothered to rekindle them.

My uncle smiled, and reached out a clawlike hand for me. For another terrible moment, I let myself hope, knowing that it would hurt all the more when it was crushed. But I walked up to him, and laid my hand in his.

He drew me toward him, and peered up into my face with eyes that barely saw, much less comprehended. "Good. Good. You've come. Took long enough, wench. I'll want meat, boar I should think, and red wine. Bring it here."

I forced back the hurt that had risen at his words, and nodded. "As my lord wishes."

I was not alone after all. Two grey-cloaked servants came out from the shadows behind the throne, and I told them to fix the king a fine supper. They nodded, for silence was their way, and left.

The king did not hear any more; he had gotten what he wanted. But I sat beside him nonetheless, and held his hand, and reminded him who he was – Théoden son of Thengel, Lord of the Mark, King of Rohan, Master of Horses. I knew he did not hear, but perhaps in his fragmented dreams, my words would return to him.

After a while the servants returned, bearing covered dishes that steamed, and set them at the king's table, which was the only one left in that silent hall. The king rose slowly, and I gave him my arm, and with him leaning on me, I led him down to the table.

He sat slowly, staring at the food as if he had forgotten what it was. Then he jerked his head in my direction, and I poured him a chalice of wine red as blood.

I could not watch him eat. He thrust his head forward like a pigeon, thin, bony fingers ripping food apart and thrusting it into his mouth, which chewed and drooled and hung slack. He slurped great gulps of wine, and used the fine furred cuff of his robe to wipe his mouth.

I stood with my back to him, half-hidden in the gloom. The sounds of the feasting bruised me inside. My uncle had been a proud man, and noble. It hurt me to see him reduced to this, this _thing_, as witless as a block of wood, and as savage as an animal.

When at last the sounds subsided, I turned around, and used a linen cloth to clean the food and wine from his mouth, as he stared blankly at the wall beyond my shoulder. I was a daughter of kings, and yet in this house, in what it had become, I was no better than any other faceless maidservant.

I helped him to his feet, and the other servants returned to clear the table. Then I led my uncle back to his throne, and left him there, rocking slightly back and forth, his lips mouthing words from wherever they came – whether from the darkness in his mind, or the black heart of the Worm, I did not know.

"May I go, my lord?" I asked quietly.

At first, he made no answer, a soft whistle slipping through his open, parched lips as he kept staring. Then he jerked, and waved a hand irritably, and said, "Go, get thee gone, wench, and do not trouble me further."

_I trouble you because I love you. _I wanted to tell him that, so badly, and yet I knew when not to waste my breath. So I nodded, and bent to kiss the wizened fingers, grown over with white hair tangled about thick golden rings. Then I left. At least from the back he could not see the pain on my face.

I stepped out to where my guards still protected the door. They inclined their heads respectfully in my direction, and I nodded briefly back. I went to the very edge of the high stone porch and gazed across the plain, as if my pitiful mortal eyes could bring me tidings of my brother.

My guards knew my mind, and they stepped up protectively behind my back. "My lady," said one. "Lord Éomer's strong, battle-hardened, and well-nigh unstoppable when it comes to swords. He will not have fallen."

"I once might have said the same about Théodred," I answered, my voice quiet. Even then I saw my cousin lost in the haze of fever, eyes blurry with what must be terrible pain. The thought of Éomer's proud features contorted thus felt like a blow to the stomach.

"He will survive," the guard insisted loyally. "I've ridden with him many times, my lady. Nothing can withstand him."

This only made my hurt greater. He had ridden, and I had not. He knew my brother's skill on the field firsthand, whereas I only heard it through hearth-tales, and giddy men boasting after the winning of a great victory.

I did not want to speak harshly to the guards; after all, they were Éomer's men, and devoted to him, and they were protecting me as best as they could. So I stood there in a shell of icy silence, staring and seeing nothing, listening and hearing nothing, wondering how far away he had gone, and if he would ever return.

After a long time had passed I turned away and left the night to its own devices; if it split with fire at the horizon or shook to the faint far-off rhythms of driving war machines, it at least did not creep near enough Edoras to raise the alarm. The early spring night was chill and it stung at my cheeks as I walked without point or purpose through the narrow winding streets. Meduseld crowned the crest of the gold-grassed hill, home and prison, loyalty and loathing, half-remembered joy and all-too-present fear. Its sharp raftered roof took a bite from the star-sprinkled sky, and I slowed, my steps dogged by a half-known dread. The Wormtongue was there, and the twisted puppet masquerading as my uncle. I could not go there.

Instead I turned my steps and looked back to see that Éomer's men were still at my back; ruffians could run in the streets after dark and might have found enough courage at the bottom of a goblet to try their fortunes with their Lady, fire-blooded and reckless enough to disregard the phantom threat of vengeance. For from whom would the stroke fall? The king was a dotard, the prince dying, the Marshal of the Mark uncertain to return from a field rife with foes. But my guards were still there, good loyal Rohirrim that they were, and they shadowed me silently to the door of the hall where Théodred lay.

Inside, it smelled sickly sweet, like bitter medicine and putrescent flesh, the rot creeping over the swathes of bloodstained linen. Théodred was a long time in dying; instead of passing to the welcoming Shadow, he lingered and suffered, caught in the throes of feverish hallucination and hungry, all-encompassing agony. There was crusted vomit on his chin and his eyes were white and rolling, sweat dripping into them from the lank tangles of his hair. There was an old nurse with him, wimpled and weary, dabbing a cloth at his mouth.

"Welthaew," I said. "Your service is good and loyal, and you shall have your reward. But it is late, and your hearth must call. Leave us."

"As you say, my lady." She dawdled in leaving, packing all her herbs and simples into her wicker basket, her eyes cast uneasily at the figure wrapped in the blankets, who lay like a carved statue on the bed. But at last the door opened and closed behind her, creaking on its leather hinges, and I was left to my duty. If it was not to watch Théoden in living death, it was to watch Théodred slip into the true darkness. I was going to go mad, tear my clothes and run frothing at the mouth, barefoot and hair streaming like a terrible keening ghost. They would bar their doors against me and call me witch, shun me in the light and guard against my approach in the night.

Théodred had thrown aside the blankets in his convulsions, and I could see his wound. Scabrous gussets of torn tissue draped wetly over the gleaming dark red of muscle and the intricate porcelain framework of bone, held together with straining stitches and soaked through with blood. The Orcs had done their work well on him; he suffered and agonized, but the rot had not yet gnawed away the core of him. And at the same time he lingered, there was no hope of recovery. It was the worst kind of paradox imaginable.

His lips parted slightly. I thought I saw a faint recognition in his fever-charred eyes, and the word that forced its way through the mashed, bruised remnants of his throat bore a passable resemblance to my name. "Eo – eo – whennnn….." The _eo _was high and thin, the _when _low and straining, almost guttural, rasping against the scars.

"It's me, cousin," I answered, reaching out to sponge the sweat and blood from his forehead. "It's all right." It was a damned lie, but what was I supposed to say?

"Éowyn," he said, and the word came easier, beginning to soothe a fraction of the rawness in my heart. If he could look at me, if he could know me – just once before the end, then he could carry it like a golden jewel into the dark road that lay ahead of him, the one that led forever into the land of the lost.

"Cou – cousin," he said, and his head tilted as if on a rolling pivot. He seemed halfway lucid, but I knew better than to trust to hope; it would fade again in a second and leave me calling desperately to a bedazzled corpse that knew nothing of its name or memory. I worried where this burst of strength had come from, and I was afraid that I knew.

"Eo – Éomer?" Théodred said suddenly, after a terrible effort.

"He's gone. He had to leave again; there is no rest for the Riders." I closed his limp, cold hand in mine and began to chafe the fingers, as if I thought I could make the blood beat more strongly through closed and deserted veins. All the blood he had must certainly be smeared on the bandages; there was none left to power the workings of his ruined body. His eyes blinked dully at me, flicking open and closed as a nictitating film slid down over unseeing pupils. Even his eyelashes had blood on them.

"F---fffather?" he choked out, and bent double with terrible, wet, tearing coughing.

"He asked for you today," I said, feeling an agonized stab at the lie, and yet I would not bear the grim tales of Théoden's decline to his son on his deathbed. "He said your name."

Théodred's ashen lips turned up in what might have been a smile, but all the dried blood cracked and sifted off, making it difficult to discern for certain. Then his head rolled to one side and back again, his eyes searching frantically for something he did not see, and his hand tightened and loosened spasmodically in my grasp, wrenching desperately, his torn fingernails digging into my palm. It hurt, but I did not let go. A smoky lantern guttered in the dim rafters above us, providing just enough light for me to see the naked agony on his face.

"Dear gods, dear gods, please, it hurts, it hurts, oh, make it stop, make it stop," he chanted, in a breathless dry litany that was worse than screaming. He was a warrior; he would not scream, but the pain would eat him alive nonetheless. His body twisted and wrenched beneath the covers.

"Théodred!" I said urgently. He could not leave me, not now –

"Eo – eo, cousin, Éowyn, Éomer, Father, Mother, oh gods, the _pain!" _His voice rose to a shuddering shriek that tore like a knife into my heart. His body shook and spasmed one last time – then abruptly, as swiftly as if the puppet-master had cut the string, he went still. A faint breath hissed through his nose and mouth and left its ghost in the cool air, and another did not follow it.

His eyes were wide open, clear and unseeing, devoid of the pain that had twisted and blurred them but a scant second earlier. His arm was upraised as if in victory, veins bluish and snakelike, skin as pale as snow. His mouth was frozen in a perpetual tiny smile, and even as I cried his name and cupped his stiffening face in my nerveless hands, I knew it was too late.

--------------

This was the latest and hardest test of my ironclad will not to cry. I do not remember how I succeeded in repressing the hot and violent tears, or indeed my desperate will to run mad, aside from the ghostly memory that I was a woman and a lady and _the _Lady, the Lady of Ice and Snow and all the tears that had frozen in her wintry soul. The pain was the only thing hot inside me, bright and burning and tearing a streak through me that made it hard to breathe. I cradled his head, bent over him, breathing as short and raggedly as if a horse had kicked me in the chest.

Éomer's men must have become alarmed at how long I was spending inside the sick bay, and that was where they found me, my white dress smeared with the ichor from the bloodstained hay scattered on the rush-strewn floor. It trailed down like a bridal veil or a funereal shroud, and it took no guesswork to see which was the more appropriate. I must have looked mad indeed to them, for they bolted forward like a pair of overeager stableboys and took me by the shoulders. "My lady!"

I lifted my head to look at them, and something in my face must have made them recoil, for they flinched as if I had struck them. "My cousin is dead," I said simply. "He will want washing and binding."

"Oh – my lady – " They must have been terrified to look in the bed, but they did, Théodred's cooling hand still locked within my own. The stillness had fallen, unbroken by rattling breaths or feverish crying. The stillness had fallen forever and I knew that there were no more tears left inside me – or perhaps there were too many. To allow a chink in my dam of ice meant that I would be drowned in them.

They took me away after that, and women were summoned to wash Théodred, to dress him in a suit of new armor and to make him presentable for his long journey to the halls of our fathers. This was work unfit for the Lady, and they tried to steer me back to my chambers to change my soiled dress and to make myself beautiful again. But I refused them, again and again, and stood out in the freezing night on the stone porch of Meduseld and watched the moon rise quicksilver, spilling its light on the sky, and since I could no longer do so for Théodred, I directed all my prayers for my brother and prayed that they would not betray him as vilely as they had my cousin.

--------------

I slept badly and shallowly and had the most terrible dreams. They came creeping in from the cracks in the walls, from the darkness held back by thatch and wood and stone, and coiled across my floor in sinuous phantasmal snakes. They ensnared my head like a bridle and slid through my teeth like a bit, saddling me and mastering me, and they rode me with fierce and unrelenting vividness. I might have cried out in my sleep, but I did not sob and mashed the pillow to a sweaty mess beneath my cheek.

Near dawn I rose and dressed, but not in the gown that my maids had cleaned during the night and laid out starched and fresh, its white sleeves spread as if to entrap a ghost. Instead I opened my trunk and pulled out my other things, slowly and thoughtfully, and began to fit them on.

A soft leather undertunic, with cotton smallclothes. Knitted stockings and another tunic, this made of heavier leather and stitched with elaborate woolen loops of horses and riders and fair reckless men sounding the last charge, heedless of death and drunk on glory. I slid it over my head as if it was a sacrament, then tied the strings beneath my arms and at my sides.

Next came the woolen trousers, slid up beneath the tunic and balanced with the leather boots, and then came the byrnie of chainmail, fitted for a woman's lighter frame. Over _that _came the green tunic embroidered with the white horse of Rohan, and then on my arms I fitted vambraces, and to my legs, greaves. I knotted my hair up lastly and placed it beneath my helmet, and then from the deepest recesses of the trunk, I pulled my sword.

I kept it well in repair and polished the metal almost nightly, honing it to an edge too sharp to be touched, and it slithered softly free of the embossed scabbard. I brought it before my face, my hand locked to the hilt, and then slashed down quickly, rending the air with a sound like a scream.

Then I turned and left the chamber, hurrying quietly and alone through the tangling web of passages and corridors that led out of Meduseld and into the bracing bright morning air. I blinked like something dazed emerging from its winter chrysalis, screwing up my eyes against the strength of the pink-red glow blossoming sedately over the mountains. Then I turned and went to the stables.

This early, there was no one there save for a few groggy stablemen, warming last night's ale and lumps of bread and cheese over a steaming brazier. They mumbled greetings to me, barely giving me a second glance – out of dress and mantle, it was harder to tell who I was and I preferred it that way. I crossed the hay causeway unmolested and opened the stall of my chestnut mare, Ingelda.

She was excited to see me and ready to take the bit, and I pulled down tack from dank, musty-smelling corners, fitting the saddle girth round her sleek sides, my hands calm and cool on buckle and clasp. I slid the headstall over her silky ears and buckled the bridle, giving her only a light bit instead of the heavy bar that sometimes had to be used for the more cantankerous stallions. Then I placed one boot lightly in the stirrup and swung up, checked once again for any stablemen that might be watching, and cantered quietly out the back way.

There was no express prohibition against my riding, but the same men who had considered it charming and brave when I was younger now considered it ill-advised and out of place for the Lady, something best left to the men. I did not care. Who were they to tell me what to do? There was nothing in the world they could have done to stop me.

I turned Ingelda's head down the narrow straw-strewn path to the tiltyard where I had practiced endless hours as a girl and then as a young woman, before I was forced so quickly under the smothering cloak of ladyhood, and had to learn to sit and sew and smile, to make pleasant conversation and to be endlessly witty, to serve the ceremonial mead and to step back and watch and wait. I was tired of waiting. What had it brought me but ashes and dust, cold bitter draughts that tasted of tears?

The tiltyard was empty save for my old foes, the straw knight and the weathered quintain, scored and cut with the marks of broken lances. I drew Ingelda to a halt by the entrance, and selected a wooden practice spear, designed to shatter upon impact as to not unseat the inexperienced rider. Then I hesitated and put it back, drawing instead one of the real spears, a heavy thing of turned and polished ashwood that was tipped with a razor-sharp point. To use it was an honor granted only after hours, months, years of training, and more than one house had lost a promising son from its reckless use.

I hefted the spear in my hand, testing its weight and balance. Ingelda whickered eagerly, and I gave the mare her head. Keeping a loose grip on the reins with one hand, my knees clutching her sides tightly, I spurred her into a full gallop across the empty yard, couched the lance, and felt the morning air stream cool and sharp against my face.

Just before Ingelda reached the knight and the quintain, I closed my eyes and imagined that the padded target was an Uruk-hai, and I was numbered among the riders of my brother. Then I flung the spear forward with all of my might, so hard that it slashed cleanly through the padding and sent goose down everywhere, bleeding through tattered chamois.

The crossbar swung wildly, doing its best to slam horse and rider, but I kept my seat and drew the lance up, pulling Ingelda around into a tight circle. She lowered her head and blazed back across the yard, and I lowered the lance for a second strike.

This time, the live steel tore into the tough heartwood of the crossbar, ripping the shreds of padding from it so violently that I had to close my eyes against an explosion of feathers. The butt end of the lance rammed hard into my ribs, hard enough to knock my wind out and leave me gasping but still astride, sucking air painfully and barely managing to keep control of the lance. I tossed it aside as I went and drew my sword with one hand, keeping Ingelda at her full speed, my eyes watering with the force of my ride.

My antagonist this time was the straw knight, since I'd left the quintain in such disrepair. Straw was not flesh and a true enemy would either flee or fight back, but I did not care. I blazed back across the yard and slammed my sword into the painted shield so hard that I felt the echoes of it reverberate up my arm.

The straw knight's mace spun, but by then I was safely clear, my arm stinging with a beautiful pain that ran like a fringe of icicles up to my shoulder. I came around for a second blow and this time I screamed, a high and shrill sound that was just eerie enough to severely discomfit an enemy expecting a man to ride at him. I shouted again, words in my native tongue, Rohirric, nothing that I heard or expected, as if they had torn themselves free of my soul. I pulled Ingelda to a skidding halt and slammed my sword into the false knight until it was nothing but painted wooden shards and scraps of weather-beaten clothing, strewn on the dirt with his straw guts.

This was all I had, worn mannequins that could not move, that watched my assault on them with calm painted eyes and did not turn away, swinging hopelessly again and again in a futile effort to unseat me. They could do nothing else, and I realized then that we were much alike, the straw knight and the quintain and I, and I hated it.

I sat there, gasping, and thought that the liquid stinging my eyes must be sweat, because it could be nothing else. Then a spasm shook me hard enough to tear my fragile shell in half, and I desperately gulped for air like a landed fish. I could barely scramble off Ingelda's back because I was shaking so violently. My gloved hand hung onto the stirrup and I buried my face in her glossy flank. She smelled of horse and leather and sweat, and she gave a nervously inquiring whicker.

"Good girl, good girl," I said, my voice a thread, and reached up to hold onto the pommel of the saddle, not trusting my legs to bear me up without its aid. Then I looked around to ensure that I was alone, completely alone, and that some pugnacious young band of ale-enlivened rapscallions hadn't come to showcase their skills. I could not bear to break, and I could bear it less if they would look and ask questions of me.

I barely remembered the feeling. The lump in the throat felt like choking. The stinging of the eyes felt like the wind, or the onions weltering in the dark earthen storehouses. The first spasm hurt, and the second hurt worse, as the high-walled dam inside me began to crack and the icy core began to come to pieces in its rush. There, alone except for my horse, as the rising sun brightened the gold-thatch roofs of Edoras and put a torch to the pale streamers of cloud striating the heavens, I learned again of how it was to cry.


	4. Éomer – Secrets and Shards

CHAPTER FOUR

Éomer – Secrets and Shards

The new-born morning stank of orc.

The éored had left the steaming carcasses behind several hours ago as the Sun rode its gleaming chariot across the arched pale sky of the high Rohirric plains, and still the smell of death dogged us. Rot and corruption, venality and treachery, maggots and clotted blood; the smell was enough to fell a troll and seemed to trail after us on the wind, refusing to let us forget the night's work. The thick sheaves of sun-parched grass had been trampled and broken by the relentless thunder of boots, and a lame Rider with a blind horse could have marked their path. Speed was their intent, not subterfuge.

We rode with the intent to put as many leagues between ourselves and Fangorn as was possible. The thick eaves sheltered a smothering curse beneath their tangled branches, and the smoke from the burning heap of Orcs filtered lazily through the trees, so rich that they seemed to be rotting. The forest swarmed up the stony ribs of the mountains and swallowed up man and beast without discrimination. It was a fey and evil place and I was glad to see the last of it.

The morning air felt good slapping at my sweaty face beneath my helmet, and later, when I tried to recall the ride I found nothing concrete, only quick flashes of images and memories caught like a gleaming fish from a fast creek. I was so tired that it was a wonder I could still think clearly; the idea of sleep seemed as fair and unattainable as the first evening star. But I had gone past the state of thought into the state of simple and instinctual reaction, and when the sudden voice hailed us like a bowshot through the clean air, to react was all I could do.

--------------

I raised my lance and spun Firefoot about, and the éored, good strong men that they were, picked up immediately on the shift in direction and wheeled their horses to match mine. They fell into formation, still wary of enemies after the night's gory work, and lowered their spears like a thicket of gorse, drawing the horses into a tight defensive ring. I rode up quickly through the bristling hedge of sharp steel and drew Firefoot to a halt before the usurpers.

They did not seem that dangerous, but I had heard enough tales to be justly cautious. One night in the recent past I had awoken at the chill of a doused campfire, and as I moved to put more wood on it, I had startled something at the perimeter.

I had seen nothing clearly except for a grey blur that dissolved into the thick darkness, but it had been man-shaped and man-sized and wore a hooded cloak, and its eyes burned intelligently and malevolently back at me.

Later I had heard that the White Wizard, our traitorous and erstwhile friend, was known to walk about as an old man, gleaning information from unwitting peasants who saw nothing of telling such a feeble old beggar whatever he asked. The Riders had mounted an intense effort to find and trap the wizard, but everywhere his spies eluded us and his forms were many and shifting, enough so that we might pass him without thought or seize at him yet find our fists empty when we pulled them back. Confronted with the strangers before me, I at once thought that they were some cloaked and cunning evil, for who else could such a misfit party be?

The first was a man, tall and clean-limbed, with long dark hair, wearing tattered leather and dirty mail, with a sword sheathed at his side and a hunting-knife at his back. He bore arrows and bow, and his face was stern and keen, lined with a wisdom that must have done well to hide the evil that doubtless lurked within. Saruman had done well to choose such a noble specimen, for whom would ever doubt his fealty?

On his breast he wore a silver brooch set with a green stone, wrought in the likeness of an eagle with outstretched wings, and a silver-emerald leaf of similar workmanship clasped his cloak. The cloak was a strange thing to me. It seemed to contain deepening shadows and winding vales, every mountain and every passing cloud, the reflection of the clear hot sky and the long waving grass of the plains. It had all of these forms and none of them, and yet it appeared to me as a simple grey cloak. It struck me at once that this had to be some wizardly trickery.

There was a part of me that called to take off their heads; my blood was still up from the fight of the night and I could have killed them and called myself lucky to be rid of more of Saruman's filthy little informers. He was not a foolish man; fools scarce lived long enough in this day and age to garner the name, much less the power that the wizard had built. But something stayed my hand, and I continued my inspection.

The second was an Elf, as far as I could tell. Such an exotic species was one that the Rohirrim had little knowledge or experience of, but I knew him for one of the Eldarin when first I saw him. He too was tall, and slender as a willow-wand, dressed in green and brown, and his long fair hair was pulled back from his clear brow. He carried two ivory-hilted knives, a longbow, and a quiver of arrows, and he regarded me with the steady and depthless gaze of an immortal who fears no threat that a mortal can mount against him.

The third, and what made me sure that Saruman had built a hodgepodge of the nearest available spies, was a Dwarf. What in the name of Eorl was a _Dwarf _doing with a Man and an Elf, the latter being the well-known antagonists of their race? It – he – was short and burly, clothed in chainmail and a surfeit of weaponry, with a long beard erupting from beneath a rune-etched helmet, and he grasped his axe fractiously and eyed me as if I were a tree he would very much like to hew.

All of this appraisal took place in far less time than it took to recount. Then I found my voice where it had fled in the back of my throat, worn and rusty from weariness and disuse except to scream. "Who are you?" I demanded, "and what business do an Elf, a Man, and a Dwarf have in the Riddermark, so far afield? I will have your names and your errand before you shall pass."

The man was the first to speak, for his companions were as silent as the stone kings of the Anduin that I had heard about in song and story. "I am called Strider," he said. "I came from the North to hunt Orcs."

I laughed. I could not help it. I had come fresh from the slaughter, my sword still stained with their blood and my muscles screaming with weariness, and here was this strange man who had risen from the grass with his absurd companions, speaking as if three hunters were to overtake a heavily-armed and swift-moving pack of Orcs. "You know little of them," I said, "if you search for them in this fashion." Gazing back at his cloak, I added, "How could you escape our sight? What sorcery have you used?"

"It is the elvish arts that guide us," Strider answered. _Strider_ – not for one moment did I believe it to be the man's name, but there was little else I would be able to prize from him. "We are the friends of the Lady of Lórien, and it is by her favor that we go unnoticed."

I scowled. "It is said that she is a net-weaver and a sorceress, an elvish witch to ensnare the minds of men, and if you go by her seal, perhaps you are also as unnatural as she." I had no wish to tarry further, and saw nothing to be lost by killing them, but I turned to glare at Strider's companions, the silent Elf and the recalcitrant Dwarf. "Have you no tongues?" I snarled at them. "Speak!"

The Dwarf's heavy-browed black eyes sparked. "Give me your name, horse-master, and I shall give you mine," he growled at me.

I could bear it no longer. I had not come to be threatened and usurped in my own land, fresh off a draining battle that might have won nothing at all, far afield and bereft of friend or kin or anything aside from my éored, uncertain and eager to be off, to kill or release these strangers and turn our horses toward home.

"My name," I said, "is none of your business, yet yours is mine since I find you abroad on my lands. Yet I am called Éomer son of Éomund, the Third Marshal of the Mark."

"Then, Éomer Éomund's son, let me guard your raving tongue against foolish words," said the Dwarf grimly. "You speak evil of what is fair beyond your imagination, and only little wit might excuse you."

Dear gods, he had the gall to _lecture _me. The sunlight flashed on the edge of my sword as I stepped toward him. "I would cut off your head, Dwarf," I sneered at him, uncaring of any insult I might provoke and too tired to care, "if it stood but a little higher from the ground." What could they do? There were three of them and a hundred-five of us, counting myself. If the Dwarf took to chopping, he would fall in a hail of lances before he could have gotten anywhere. I was so tired that death would be a relief as sweet as sleep.

However, I had not expected what followed next. The Elf, taking a confounded interest in the hairy runt's welfare, snatched an arrow from his quiver with a speed that blinded me, and the next thing I knew, it was pointed in my face. "You would die before your stroke fell," he snapped.

_Enough. _They had no right to do this to me, no justification to threaten me on my lands, in front of my men, three insolent strangers sprung and guided from a sorceress's dark weavings and running to find the Orcs that we had already killed, lightly armed and oddly dressed, come in a time when every shadow concealed a spy. I would not stand for it, and I raised my sword. The color of an Elf's blood is the same of that of men, and I knew that quite well.

But then Strider sprang between us. "Enough!" he cried, echoing my own thoughts. "We have no place for this! We are friends to Rohan, and to Théoden King, son of Thengel and heir to the line of Eorl. We have no quarrel with you, Horse-master, if you do not serve Sauron, the Lord of Mordor."

I stared at him with a deep degree of skepticism. But there was something about him too pure and raw to be feigned, and at last I lowered my sword. "I only serve Théoden," I said, with a sharp bite to remind him that that included himself. "But I have had my fill of lies and half-truths and piecemeal answers. _Who are you? _Who has commanded you to hunt Orcs across our lands? _Tell me!"_

Something changed then, and there was a flash of light that might have come from the sun itself, or might have only been a stray beam catching on bright burnished steel. Strider seemed to grow taller, and a starburst flame flickered across his brow. He threw back his cloak to reveal a pure whiteness which dazzled my eyes, and with a ringing clash he drew his sword from its sheath.

"You want my name?" he said, and his voice rang like thunder through the parched hills. "Very well then, Éomer son of Éomund, you shall have it! I am Aragorn son of Arathorn, the one they call Elessar, Elfstone, the heir of the Dúnedain and the line of Númenor, and of Isildur Elendil's son. I have come to this land to seek out my friends. Will you aid me or thwart me? Choose swiftly!"

I stepped back from him. His head seemed to glimmer with a crown of gems and his face was cold and strong and fair as if it had been carved from stone, as if some elvish glimmer lurked beneath the man-skin. His longsword sparked as if it was afire. Runes were worked on the blade and it was cross-pieced and set with dark jewels that drank the sun and wove a haloing aura about this Aragorn, who had named himself the heir of the lost Kings of the West. I would have thought him mad, but at the same time, there was the unmistakable sheen of truth to his words, a sweet and desperate relief to a man sick and gorged on foul-tasting lies.

"Strange times are these," I said instead, "when a Dwarf and Elf walk side by side beneath the stewardship of the Lady of the Golden Wood, and a king dresses as a common warrior. If your friends were with the Orcs you claim to be hunting, they are dead. We slaughtered them in the night and left none alive."

"These were not Orcs," Aragorn insisted. "These were hobbits, Halflings, only children to your eyes and wearing elf-made cloaks like our own." He plucked at the shifting, shimmering fabric, so hard to describe as any guise but seeming to bear them all in turn.

"We left none alive," I said again, and paused. "I am sorry."

The strangers asked us more questions, and I answered them as best I could. He told me an odd tale of Imladris and Gondor, of searching for these hobbits, and I in turn told him of our struggle to keep Saruman and Sauron from our borders. I told him that it was a lie that the Rohirrim served the Lord of the Black Tower, and that once we had been friends with the master of Isengard but he had spit upon and spoiled that union. He was now among our deepest enemies and had Aragorn and his companions – the Elf called Legolas and the Dwarf called Gimli – proven to be in his service, their bodies would now lie in the long grass of the plains.

At last I had heard enough to convince me that their errand was no falsity or shadow but a true and hasty one, and brought them horses that had belonged to the men I had lost. It was hard to give them away, their absence being so fresh, and yet the rotten flesh had to be excised as surely as I had done to myself, for the éored could never be crippled by grief or memory when there was so much yet to be done. Hasufel and Arod were given to the use of these strangers, with my only stipulation being that the horses were returned to Edoras where they belonged.

Aragorn accepted my terms with a calmness close to resignation, and thanked me for the gift. I reminded him again of his promise, and then mustered the éored, who had fallen into disorder while I talked long with the three hunters. They had dismounted to enjoy a drink or a piss in the bright sun, and had to be called quickly back to formation. Our course was set across the Entwade, and from there to Edoras. It was one of our shortest journeys yet, and I was much cheered at the thought of home and hearth. Éowyn would be there, and I could personally ensure that the Worm came nowhere near.

The strangers dwindled behind us and then were lost to the thick grassy sea. It brushed against my armored legs and at times was deep enough to swallow both Firefoot and myself whole; I was aware of the éored only as the pulsating rhythm of hooves in the deep earth.

In the late afternoon we reached the Entwade. It was a wash of delta and dark rich soil, and a thick verdant crop of wildflowers grew overflowing on the high banks. The Entwash was a strong snake-river, navigating through a treacherous rocky course of boulders and broken slabs of granite. The éored proceeded in single file down the narrow path that led alongside, spirits cheered by the merry sound of the running water. Blossom-heavy branches hung low overhead and hands reached up to pick one for a sweetheart.

Despite all that, the Entwash was a queer place. The forest lurked nearby, and the soil seemed rich enough to coil about and move the roots of the trees – or perhaps that was only the imagination of a man sick with weariness and slaughter. But it was the quickest route back to Edoras, and I was desperately in need of the haste.

Night broke in the vault of the heavens. I was so exhausted that I feared I would fall, a terrible ignominy for a man who learned to ride before he could walk and who spent his life astride. I clung to Firefoot's mane, weaving my fingers through the thick rough hair, feeling each jolt of his hooves against the ground shudder up through my body and set each nerve into individual, blazing fire.

I was barely in my right mind. I believe it was Firefoot who led the way home, not I, for I was half-comatose in the saddle. But then the valley bent and led away and opened up beneath the stars, and in the center of it Edoras rose high on the sharp-shouldered hill, with Meduseld glimmering golden at its pinnacle. Home. My blood-caked lips split to smile.

The éored cantered through the gates and up to the high courtyard. I chanced to look up, but Éowyn was not there; she must not have heard our approach. That was odd, as she knew her duty was always to stand out, to restore weary hearts and to smile and to raise bruised spirits. I did not fault her if the weather was foul, but the night was fine and clear, with a breeze that stirred my matted hair once I lifted my helmet off.

"Where's the Lady Éowyn?" said Hregar, another of my Riders, as he swung down beside me. "I'm sure the Worm would not dare – " but he did not complete the sentence.

Always I saw Firefoot to his stall by myself, and unsaddled and curried him until his coat shone glossy smooth, but tonight, I could barely stand, let alone summon the fine control necessary to manage all the buckles and straps. I locked my knees and stood straight with a tremendous effort of will, and then heard behind me a sigh, as in relief or disbelief, and turned to see that it was the former.

Éowyn was making her way among the men, her long fair hair draped down her back like a cloak. Her smiles looked as weary as I felt and the men wisely did not trouble her overmuch; she congratulated them on the quickness and success of their ride and then she came to me. We stood there for a moment, regarding each other, and I noticed the worn red shine to her eyes. If I had not known that Éowyn did not cry, I would have thought for certain that she had.

"Greetings, brother," she said quietly. "I am cheered to see your return."

I took a step and swayed, cursing myself and my weakness and praying that none of the men had seen, and in an instant she was beside me, her hands on my arm and underneath my shoulder. Her grasp was strong as any man's, her fingers thin and powerful as steel, and I was grateful for it, especially since it seemed only as if I had given her a ceremonial arm to bring her back to the hall. We walked forward with a passable impression of steadiness, and I leaned far more of my weight into her than I cared to admit. She gave no sign of it, and turned us up toward the hall.

The éored dispersed, to home fires and hot stew and loving wives, as Éowyn and I made our slow way up to Meduseld. I jarred her slightly once, and a brief hiss of pain escaped through her teeth. Beneath the smooth white cloth of her dress, I could see an ugly dark bruise, and rage flared in me. As soon as I had done with her, it was to the Worm, and this time, nothing, _nothing _could stop me killing him.

Éowyn kept us moving, somehow, up the steps and about the back to a thatched veranda where we could see the dark sweep of the land, and where we could talk in private. I sank to the stone bench with a groaning sigh of relief, and she sat down beside me, her back as ramrod-straight and her poise as impeccable as ever. She reached up with one hand to push a tangled strand of hair out of her face, and the breeze rustled through my own, long and golden and rank and sodden with sweat and blood.

"Théodred is dead," said my sister, without looking at me. But her hand reached out, uncertainly, shyly, as if it had done so without the consent of the rest of her, and her fingers closed round my own leather-gloved ones. She squeezed so hard that it hurt, and the next breath she drew seemed less steady. "Last night."

I had known that this was the only tale I could possibly return to, and yet it punched through my chest like one of the orc-spears I had been fortunate to avoid. "His end – was it easy?" was the only thing I could think of to say. _Foolish question, Éomer. He was poisoned, and the Orcs' poisons are painful and slow. _"Did he die – did he die well, as befit a prince and a Rider?"

Éowyn's lips went white. "He died – bravely," was all she said. "He bore terrible pain."

I closed my eyes. I thought I felt her touch my shoulder with her free hand, but I was not sure. My hand held onto hers so tightly that I must have bruised it, and yet she said nothing at all as the breeze ran tousling fingers through our hair. Éowyn drew a half-strangled breath that might have been a sob, but when I opened my eyes her face was calm as ever.

"I am glad you are safe, Éomer," she said. "I watched for you."

She reached over and absentmindedly ran her finger through the ends of my hair, briskly pulling out a snarl, but she had a long while to go and needed a very large comb for a weapon if she stood a chance of winning that war. Then she pulled her hand from mine, and said, "The guards you lent me are a comfort. I thank you."

Despairing, I turned to her again. Éowyn was so fragile inside, ice and fire warring as to which would destroy her, and yet whenever I found a single chink in her armor, she blocked me from entrance, choosing to handle it on her own, shunning all help I might have offered. She could not shut me out, not now. With Théodred gone, we were truly the only refuge that the other had.

I reached out and took both of her hands in my own; they curled like the legs of a dead spider, but she did not pull away. "Éowyn," I said softly. "Don't do this to me. Please. I want to help you. We need each other – we are all that we have now."

I thought I saw a flicker in her eyes, but surely it was only the light. Her fingers moved briefly in my grasp, and her face turned upwards to mine. She said nothing at all, but I could sense a weakening of the icy walls about her. I sighed, and heard my bed screaming, and judged that was as far as she would let me in for tonight. I could not stay on my feet longer, so I bent to kiss her quickly on the cold mouth and said, "Sleep well, sister."

"And you as – " she began, and then her eyes went round and – I could not believe it, not of her – afraid. "Éomer," she said softly. "Behind you."

I spun. Emerging from the shadows cast by the deep eaves were four or five of the Wormtongue's thugs, unkempt and hungry-eyed, with unwashed coils of hair hanging over their gaunt faces. They were all armed with shortswords and ugly flat-bladed knives, and there was an unpleasant spark about them that they all shared.

"What a tender scene," said the first lazily, tapping the point of his dagger against the plastered wall. "It's a right pity, m'_lord, _that we have a warrant to arrest you." He unfurled a sheet of battered parchment, with a dark inky scrawl barely recognizable as my uncle's signature inscribed at the bottom. "The king says you defied him, rode forth against his clear command, and threatened death to Gríma son of Gálmód, his closest and most loyal counselor."

"I did what I must!" I snarled at them. "My loyalty to my king is a thousand times greater than yours, cutthroats and lickspittles, creeping on the Worm's coattails and rising only when there is no fear of reprisal! Is this a jest, then? Five of you for one unarmed man! Did you cast lots to decide if the number should be higher? Should I put on motley and play a lute for you? Stand and fight then, you cowards!"

"You are not alone," said Éowyn bravely, and I felt her hand slip strong into mine.

"No, Éowyn, no! You cannot do this – even these gutter-filth cannot lay hands on a woman – "

"Oh, we could do that, and more, did we really want to dance to Gríma's tune," said one of the men, and sniggered unpleasantly.

The fragile thread reining my temper snapped, and I wrenched my hand free of Éowyn's. My fist swung out and connected solidly with bone, which snapped with a satisfying crunch, and one of Gríma's filthy minions groaned and dropped to his knees like a felled horse. But I was tired, so tired, and my next blow went wide. A fist hammered into my stomach, and another into my side, driving the mail rings into my flesh and into my half-healed wound. The pain blinded me and drove me to the ground, gasping.

"Éomer!" Éowyn shouted, and I could hear her screaming for the household guard. Her hands flashed over her side as if seeking to draw a sword, and she charged one of the men herself, brave defiant thing that she was. He had an instant to look surprised before her palm flashed into his nose, and he howled against the pain of smashed cartilage.

I groaned and did my level best not to vomit, but even as I was struggling to my feet to resume the fight, hands wrenched my arms back and snapped my wrists into strong cuffs of iron. I struggled, throwing my shoulders against the vulnerable bare fingers of my captors, and sank my teeth into a webbing of flesh when it came too near my mouth.

The man screamed, and I bit deeper, tasting metallic grime from his sword and slick meat and garlic from his supper, with ash from the hearthfires and the oozing copper wellspring of blood. I bit so hard that my teeth snapped together in the middle, and then a blow came from nowhere and smashed across my face, leaving me dazed, a white haze floating before my eyes.

"Get the wild man to his cage," said the man that I had bitten, face pale and eyes fever-bright with the pain, clutching his maimed hand to his chest. He wound a dirty length of linen over the bloody gash, and my head fell back, their voices echoing and ringing dully in my ears. Still I tried to fight, and distantly I heard Éowyn's screamed defiance.

We hurried across a courtyard, or at least my captors did, as I hung limp and bloody in their grasp. My head had been scattered to the four corners of the map and I hurt enough that it seemed almost comical, so much that I almost wanted to laugh. Then I sensed a furious white-gowned figure at their backs, and mustered enough wind to scream, "Éowyn, _no!"_

The men whirled, startled, to meet her. Her gown was torn and filthy, her hair blown to a riotous mess, and she ran through the thick mud of the courtyard after them. "You cannot _do _this!" she cried.

"Sorry, m'lady," said one of the men, sounding utterly unapologetic, "but the warrant's been signed by the king, after all. Your brother's a traitor and no two ways to skin a cat, so quit with this unladylike ruckus and go change your uncle's sodden smallclothes." He snickered.

Éowyn went ice-white in rage, but I plucked up enough strength to speak, even though it felt as if I had an arrow torn out of me – a sensation that I also knew. "Sister, no. Please. Not you as well." I could not fathom what the men would do if they found enough falsified charge to arrest her as well. Trapped alone, in irons, she would have no defense against their violence and lust, and the Worm himself would come down to pay her a visit. I would have put my dagger through my throat before allowing it, but I would have no defense if she kept up with it.

"Éowyn," I said again. "Leave me."

The men were already eyeing her like a prime cut of meat or a young filly, and her dress had torn down her shoulder to reveal the smooth snow-pale flesh beneath. She stood there, a filthy lady in the muddy bailey, breathing hard and her hair hanging in muddy tangles around her stricken face. But she obeyed me, and did not move again, and the last thing I saw before the hungry blackness swallowed me was the fading, frozen shape of my sister receding into the night.

--------------

When I woke, it was to the strong smell of horse, rotting meat, and blood, and to the uncomfortable chafing of the irons that were locked around both my wrists and ankles. A pale slit of sunlight fell through a high window and golden motes of dust swam in its beam.

I opened my mouth to shout for a guard and a thin moan came out instead. I wrenched my bound wrists up to my face and touched it; there was a sticky, congealing ribbon of blood by my ear and across my jaw where one of them had struck me. I was stripped of armor and boots, and had been left a thin, ragged cotton shift to wear instead. I was a prisoner in my own hall, in the cells where I had once interrogated captives, chained to the wall and mottled with fading bruises where Gríma's thrice-damned minions had evidently had their fun with me before dumping me in here. Well, let them beat me all they wanted; there was no more space to fit pain beneath my skin and consequently I would feel nothing of their harshest blows.

"Gamling!" I shouted. "Háma! Éothain! Elfhelm! Éowyn! Someone! _Anyone!"_

I shouted until my throat was raw, and I slumped forward against the pulling snarl of my chains. The shame was too great – I, Éomer, heir of a great and noble line, nephew of Théoden and Third Marshal of the Riddermark, chained and beaten like a common cur, stripped of armor and dignity, shouting without a soul to hear.

I grew desperate enough to drink the foul water in an iron bowl nearby, gagged on the taste, and refused to let myself throw it up or contemplate what was in it. Then I shouted again, and nobody came except one of my captors, who told me to shut that noise before he gave me a bruise on the other cheek to match.

I had worn bleeding trenches into my flesh with all the times I had tried to pull the irons from the wall, and I would have fallen if they had not kept me always, continually upright. I was dizzy and faint with hunger, and my head throbbed where they had struck me. The world was growing soft-edged and shot through with the welcoming darkness, and this time I gave up and fell in without a struggle, and I drowned gratefully at the bottom of a depthless black well.


	5. Éowyn – The Heir and the Healing

CHAPTER FIVE

Éowyn – The Heir and the Healing

I do not remember how long I stood in the bailey, mud crusting on the worn kidskin of my boots and my hair tangled in sweaty knots about my face. All I knew is that the moon fell beyond the arc of the world and the darkness came, leavened at last with a faint rose-hued glimmer that coiled its ropes about the sun and pulled it over the horizon, before I moved.

The ground was trampled and beaten where Éomer had kicked and fought; if I knew my brother, then he would not be the only one nursing a phalanx of fresh bruises. I was numb or mad, and I thought that in a second I would begin to laugh and laugh, that high bone-chilling shriek of a carrion crow that holds no mirth and is the last vestige before the soft descent of madness.

But I did not. I straightened. I turned my clear and expressionless eyes upwards to the eastern sky, and sighed, and let the wildness run from me, draining out until I was that pale frail dumb docile white creature again, meek and mild as milk and ready always to do her lord's bidding. I wondered if I could bring Éomer some food, and perhaps slip him the dungeon's key as well, or if the Worm would have thought of this and set guards round the prison-halls to ward off my approach. Then I turned and went up to Meduseld, high seat of kings, to tend my drooling uncle.

He was sleeping when I came, his head slumped to one side, and the carvings of his throne had worn to a deep patina where he rested against them, the shapes of men and horses gone dark and oily with age. His slack lips muttered insensible words and his fingers moved, his legs twitching as if he were a dog having a dream. His rheumy blue eyes were half-open, slits beneath haggard eyelids, but they saw nothing and reflected nothing, as inscrutable as cloud-murk.

I went to him and put my hand on his shoulder. "My lord," I said softly, "you must rouse. It is dawn."

He blinked and muttered, and finally his unseeing eyes opened and he stared at me without a spark or glimmer within them. "You are a wretched mess, wench," he said, "muddy and filthy, a disgrace to my house, yes! Go then and change your dress before you come to my presence again!" One hand beat ineffectually at me.

"My lord, it is dawn, and I am come to serve you." I bent my head. "What will you have for your breakfast?"

"Porridge with honey, biscuits and sausage, and fried fish and hot tea," he sang, his voice the high cracked wheeze of antiquity. "Now fetch it for me and change yourself, you are filthy and I shall not abide it. Go!"

I stepped back from him. I did not say to him what was most obvious – that he himself was filthier than I, his rich robes rotted and laden with dirt, his gray skin and his white hair oily from having gone long unwashed, and that a thin foul reek rose from man and garb alike. What I said was, "My lord, we have no fish. The trade roads are closed and you yourself have set the order that nothing shall come or go without your stamp and seal. It is a long way to the coast and the fish ran short a week past."

He glowered at me. "What? What lie is this? I will have you beaten for this, wench! I want fish for my breakfast and I shall have it! Now go, elsewise I shall do you worse!"

I curtsied to him, my hair dropping low so he could not see my face. "As my lord commands," I said, and left him there.

--------------

I ordered the kitchens to make my uncle his meal, with veal substituted for the fish, and then went to wash myself, gooseflesh prickling on my bare skin as I splashed bracingly cold water over all the mud. I crouched naked on a sheet in a dark corner of my chambers, for I dared not use all the wood it would take to heat a tub; I still believed that we could be under siege at any moment and to use precious kindling for something as passing foolish as a bath struck me as ludicrous.

I scrubbed with a cake of harsh lye soap and rinsed myself clean, gasping at the coldness as it cascaded through my hair and down over my back. As I did, a touch of pink came into the white deadness of my skin, a far-off flower's bloom opening beneath a deep veil of ice. There was still a profusion of bruises from my fight with the quintain and the knight; my own lance had done most of the damage rather than their flimsy spinning weapons. They grew on my body like sickly purple weeds, yellowing like jaundice about the edges. They hurt to touch and I covered them carefully in linen, so that their traitorous colors might not bleed through the white of my dress.

Then I rose up and took clean clothes from my trunk, and dressed and brushed until I was restored to my usual good keeping. I took a horn comb and worked through every snarl, every tangle, until my hair had been subdued into a flat gleaming sheet. In a silvered glass I studied my reflection, and ensured that all the cracks that had shattered my porcelain veneer had been expertly mended. They had, and I turned and left.

The sun was ascending higher on the sky, pulled by a strong westerly wind, and with it came the strange scent of something that I barely remembered. Perhaps it was the new growth on the Entwash or only the dark tricks of the springtime, which came along and rose as always despite the winter that hung close here, refusing to melt or shift. Perhaps the grief and the despair had finally snapped me like a slender frayed thread. But I thought that I smelled hope.

Before the day was much older I thought to see what I could do for Éomer. They had prisoned him in the deepest reaches of Edoras, in the foul blood-stained cells reserved for the greatest traitors or the most depraved murderers, oathbreakers and kinslayers, orc-chieftains and moral-less mercenaries. The rage closed my throat, but I had seen the fear in Éomer's eyes as they dragged him away. If I was imprisoned too, not only would it go ill for me at the hands of Gríma's men, but then there would be no veil between the Worm and the throne of Rohan.

Without Éomer or I to stand in his way, he could kill Théoden outright and make it look as if only his degenerating condition was to blame. He could construct a court of whispering sycophants, of spies and informers and assassins, and he could get Théoden to sign any decree that would proclaim him heir. I was the last vanguard between the Worm and the prize he desired, which was to take the house of Eorl and suck it to dust and bones, call himself its master, and to chain me to his side as unwilling mistress.

I could not put a toe wrong. Dearly though I desired to go to my brother and see that they had not hurt him, that he still lived with spirit undimmed and fire unquenched, I could not. I must live in flawlessness, so the Worm had no call and cause to send his lackeys after me in the middle of the night. It could not be in broad daylight; the people of Edoras loved the Worm little better than I did and would rise up against him. So although it killed another part of me inside, I turned my back to the low dark threat of the prison-house and put Éomer from my mind.

--------------

It was midmorning when they came. I stood on the porch of Meduseld and watched them from afar, three small figures ahorse at speed across the waving green plains of Rohan. They bore no banner of either friend or foe and they grew nearer with remarkable swiftness. At the lead, I eventually discerned, was someone who might have been Greyhame the wizard, Mithrandir, but we had known him as a bent old man dressed in sackcloth and who went about with wizard-staff and pointed hat, draped in layers of worn grey cloaks. The rider bore no resemblance to the Mithrandir that I had known. I guessed that it could be him only for his horse.

Théoden had once known him and took counsel with him; the old man gave him better and truer advice than any other, and my uncle had rewarded the wizard with a horse of his choosing. He neglected to exclude Shadowfax, the greatest of the _mearas_, from the candidates, and Mithrandir had taken him.

Théoden had long resented that loss, for the _mearas _were the great horses of Rohan, our pride and joy, descended from Felaróf Mansbane, the mount of Eorl. Shadowfax was unparalleled in speed and grace, and when he had departed our halls bearing the wizard on his back, I had not thought to see him again. Théoden in bitterness had given Mithrandir the name Stormcrow, and that was how he was remembered in our halls now, a half-memory of an old meddlesome man.

Yet the mighty horse running in great thrusting strides across the plains, his white coat sparkling like true-silver in the sun, could be no other, as familiar as a long-lost friend. And yet the man who rode him was a stranger to me. He was clad all in white, and white streamed his long hair and beard behind him, and his face was great and powerful.

I was surprised, and almost frightened, and I turned away. There were two horses bracketing Shadowfax and his master, and I recognized them at once as horses of Rohan. But what were the mounts of our people doing in the world at large?

Théoden had smelled war, and closed the routes and roads that funneled out like spiderwebs to weave us to the world. None were admitted to Edoras unless they knew our own tongue and other pass-words and marks of favor besides. And yet these horsethieves, brazen and accursed, the captors of that which they had no right to, were almost to the walls of Edoras by now, and beside the white rider, they seemed as dark as the new moon. What strange folk they were, to steal the master's horse and then ride to his keep!

There were three horses but four riders, for as they drew nearer to the city, I saw that a second man was mounted behind the first on the white horse, who might have been Rohan's own Arod. And the great grey barrel-chested stallion, tossing his head back as his black mane rippled in the fresh-born breeze, could have been Hasufel. Nay, it _was _Hasufel, and Arod beside him, and even at this distance I had no doubt. They were horses of Éomer's éored, and I knew them as well as my own.

I did not know what this meant. I stood transfixed in fear and wonder as the four riders vanished beneath the heavy hanging eaves of the gate. Surely they did not speak Rohirric, and yet they had gone unhindered. The White Rider had come, and with him the unashamed thieves, and yet Hasufel and Arod had come back to comfort the widows of their former masters. The wind blew strong against my face and whipped my hair to elflocks, flattening my dress against my legs, and it smelled both of hope and of change.

I went up to the hall and awaited their coming. The Worm was there, but he looked alarmed and puzzled and had little attention to spare for me. He was speaking in low and agitated tones to his handpicked band of thugs, who were nodding studiously as if taking great instruction. Then they departed from him and went to the door, where faithful Háma, one of the few who had remained loyal to the decaying House of Eorl, was striding to meet the strangers.

I watched them from within the hall. Then I went up behind Théoden, who was staring with an uneasy alertness on his face, the most awake he had seemed in days. I heard the strangers conversing quietly, and one clear voice rose up above them all. "Greatly it misgives me to set my weapon aside, for this is Andúril," it said, "and the treasure of the Kings of the West. Death shall come to any man who draws Elendil's sword save Elendil's heir."

The voice spoke without fear or hesitation and it seemed to cut through Théoden's murk like a slash from the sword that it mentioned. He sat up straight and seemed to whisper to himself, frowning and unsure, and then slumped back against the throne. "Wench," he said nervously, "wench, where are you, why have they come?"

"I do not know, my lord," I said calmly, and stepped back behind the throne, my place and keep, where I stood in shadow to tend my failing king. Then the great gold-inlaid doors of Meduseld creaked open, and sunlight daggered in, in a fall of glittering brightness, to bring with it the four strangers.

Gandalf Greyhame walked in the lead. But he was no longer the Grey, for his vestments were of pure and blinding white and his clear wise eyes saw deeper than ever before. Behind him followed the three hunters I had seen with him, but little sense could I make of them. For they were of no one race; there was a Man and Elf and Dwarf.

The Worm looked much rattled, but he rose to his feet and glided over towards them. "Late is the hour in which this conjuror chooses to appear," he said silkily, and again I thought that his soft padding feet left a dark stain on the flagstones. "Ill news is an ill guest. Láthspell I name you. For you have again brought your curse down upon this hall, Stormcrow, and you shall – "

"The only curse here is that which you have brought, Gríma son of Gálmód," said Gandalf grimly, and he held out his staff before him. The door had fallen closed, but there was a sudden and rustling wind that fluttered the dust-heavy tapestries and brought a breath of sweet air that reminded me that it was spring. "Be silent, or keep your forked tongue behind your teeth, for I have not passed through fire and death to bandy words with a treacherous serving-worm."

The Worm flinched, and a sudden and unlooked-for surge of hope filled me, and I stepped toward him. I intended to throw myself at his feet and plead for the aid of Rohan's old friend in the healing of its king. But it made no matter; he raised the staff again, and held it high as if to shed light in musty corners.

This time the Worm did not flinch; he recoiled as if struck. "The staff – did I not tell you to take the wizard's staff?" he howled at his minions, who looked startled and abashed. They lunged for Gandalf, but he brushed them off almost contemptuously and turned to face the wizened old man staring at him with pop-eyes from the high gilded seat of the House of Eorl. His white beard draped down over his knees and his cloak was heavy and dirty; he might have been a statue, and on his eyes the darkness lay thick as storm-clouds.

"Breathe the air of freedom again, Théoden, my old friend," said Gandalf softly, and lifted his staff as if to cut through the sudden silence that filled the hall.

The Worm lunged for him, and Gandalf whirled with the speed and agility of a much younger man. There was a thundering crack, and I startled back against the wall, pressing my hand to my mouth and biting my lips, as all of the torches went out at once, leaving the interior of Meduseld drowned in smoky dark gloom. There was an uneasy rumble as if the guards wished to draw their swords, but it vanished quickly and the silence was as strong as ever – yet behind it there was a low and strong thrumming, as if the string of a lute had been plucked and held too long.

Everyone stood still and frozen save for my uncle, whose eyes closed as he began to shake silently in his throne. But through the dimness I still saw Gandalf, shining out like the full moon, white and strong and terrible, and deep fire and unfathomable power both lent their shaping to his face. He burned too bright to see, and then the lights returned, and he was only an old man in a long cloak, lowering his staff as if exhausted. The Worm sprawled on his face.

Théoden wavered, and nearly fell, and I stepped forward quickly from behind the throne to catch him. Then I assisted him upright, and feared greatly to look into his eyes, for what might a wizard's machinations do to such a fevered and frail mind? But there was a silence and then soft release as if the world had let its breath out, and my uncle said in the high, wondering voice of a child, "Éowyn?"

I bit my lip to keep back a sudden hot burn of tears behind my eyes. He had not said my name once, not as the shadows gathered and circled hungrily and Meduseld became the reeking straw-shack that housed an enfeebled idiot. I said quietly, "It is I, Uncle."

He blinked again, and gazed at me with a clear and unbridled disbelief, and lifted his hand as if to touch my cheek, and then glanced over my shoulder at Gandalf and his three silent companions. "Long have I dreamed in the darkness," he said. "I do not remember what has passed beyond reach of my memory or knowledge."

"Long have you slept, Théoden King," Gandalf answered. "Now you must wake, and walk again in the light of this world. For forces are set into motion that shall not be undone, and Rohan will yet have a part to play in what shall follow."

"My hands are weak and my mind remembers little," said Théoden. "Only shadows and dust and a long deep cup of forgetfulness. I remember darkness and pain, and dreams that I reached towards before they slipped away through my fingers."

For the first time, one of Gandalf's companions spoke. He was tall and strong, with dark hair and grey eyes, and he bore himself like a king. His long cloak swirled about him like smoke, and the great green stone on his breast shone like an earthbound star. As soon as I heard his voice I knew that he had been the one who had not wished to set aside his sword, and something leapt in me that I did not yet understand.

"Where is Éomer, my lord?" he said. "Do I not rightly guess that you hold him prisoner?"

Théoden paused, as if struggling to remember. Then, "Yes," he said, "I gave the command. He rode out in defiance of my orders, and threatened death to Gríma in my hall."

"Gríma is treacherous and accursed, a false and ruinous counselor, my lord," said the man, Elendil's heir, in a soft voice that still held the strength of a whip-crack. "Send for Éomer, for he is loyal to you and those are the men that you need to gather at your side. A storm is coming."

Théoden blinked, and seemed to search deep within himself as if looking for the truth. Then his face hardened. He turned a dark and furious eye on the Worm, who scrambled to his feet as if sensing his imminent danger. "I remember whispered poison, and twisted and vengeful counsel," he said. "I remember nothing but the false promises you whispered in my ear."

I did not dare to hope that my uncle would be healed, the Worm expelled, and Éomer released all in one day; it was something that I would not allow myself to hope for lest I should be denied. But then a hand touched my shoulder gently, and my uncle turned me back to gaze on him again. "Éowyn," he said softly. "Éowyn, I know your face."

I let out a wet and unsteady breath, and I said, "Uncle," and I went into his arms and rested my head on the decayed fur collar of his robe. There was so much I could say and so little words to say them with; everything I could have said would have sounded cheap and tarnished. I closed my eyes against the sting of tears and breathed as I had not in ages.

After a moment he released me, and I lingered as if to stay near him, but he said, "Go, Éowyn sister-daughter! The time for fear has passed."

I turned to go, and turned also my head to glance back, and my heart crashed painfully against the iron cage where I kept it, and shuddered as it began to melt, and then Elendil's heir turned and our gazes met. His eyes were grey and depthless as the winter sea, and he looked into me and left me a glass maiden, tremulous and transparent, and I thought that he knew me. I stood unmanned and stunned, and then I left softly as I had come, a quiet little shadow-maiden who had felt her heart lurch back to life.

As I crossed the bailey, faithful Háma hailed me, and there was such joy in his face and manner that I smiled, and the expression felt alien to me, as if it had cracked my ice and left me naked without it, as if I had clad myself in winter so long as to forget the touch of spring. He came and bowed before me, and said, "My lady! My lady! I have heard that Lord Éomer is to be set free – come with me, and bring him clothes and a sword, and we shall take him to your uncle, who has cast aside the dark nets of the Wormtongue."

We went together across the yard and across to the low, foul-smelling prison houses. Háma stopped to strike a match and hold it to a lump of coal, which waxed to full-blown flame and ate hungrily at the iron walls of the lantern. Then he stepped before me protectively and led the way down through the garrison of cells.

There were a few prisoners there who shouted lascivious things at me, half-heard through the darkness, but Háma loosened his sword in its sheath and told them to mind their tongues else they wanted to lose them. I was grateful for his protection, and yet at the same time I felt no need of it. My uncle had regained his mind, and the lordship of the Mark, and now I feared nothing.

Háma drew to a halt before a cell, and took a ring of keys from his belt. He handed the lantern to me, and I cast it high over the foul-smelling cove, washing its light through the deep-edged shadows. A glint of golden hair caught my eye, and I held the lantern up to run up its long tangles to the head that it was attached to, which was Éomer's. He slumped exhaustedly against the wall, chained and bruised.

"Hail, Éomer, my lord!" said Háma, and fit the key into the lock. He turned it, and the door creaked open. Éomer glanced up with blurred eyes to assess the interruption, and his smile looked painful on his white lips. But he pulled himself straight, and waited with barely veiled impatience as Háma undid the irons. The guard offered him a steadying arm, but Éomer ignored it and walked from the cell under his own power.

"Éowyn," he said to me, and a strange softness came over his face, which had grown hard and distant as he fought to stave off the pain. "You are all right?"

"I am, and Théoden besides," I said, and held out the things I carried, which were a long green tunic with gilt edging, and leather trousers and boots, clothing worthy of the man who was both Third Marshal of the Mark and also the heir to Rohan's throne, a common knowledge even if it had not been spoken. "Gandalf has come, and with him three riders, and something has at long last gone right in this hall."

"Three riders?" Éomer yanked off his filthy shift without ceremony and stepped outside the circle of lantern-light, so only his voice drifted back to me as he changed quickly in the darkness. "Were they by chance an Elf, a Dwarf, and a Man?"

"They were," I said, surprised. Háma stood behind us at a respectful distance, the lantern still held aloft, casting its golden pool on the filthy hay. "The Man said he was the heir of Elendil – "

" – And bore a strange sword, worked in ancient fashion with gems and silver, with an eagle-brooch upon his breast?" Éomer finished. "He and his companions clad both in the elf-weavings of Lórien?"

"They – yes," I said, substantially surprised. "How did you know?"

"I gave them the horses." Éomer stepped back into the lantern's glow, now fully clothed, running his fingers quickly through his long hair to coax the worst of the tangles out. "My only condition was that they bring them back to Edoras, and they have, so it would seem. Come, Éowyn, my sister! Our hall is free again and we are no longer captives, so we must not slink in the shadows. I have my sword and I am to give it again to my lord. Come! Let us walk in the light!"

We went from that evil place, and Háma followed behind us. Éomer blinked as we emerged in the sunlight, and he clutched his sword to his breast as if it were an infant. I let him go, and watched at a suitable distance, and Éomer unsheathed it and let the scabbard fall. I went in far enough to watch, and then I remained hidden in the shadows, unsure that I should let myself be seen. Éomer waited beside me, and I thought I could hear his heart pounding out of his chest. Háma stood behind us both.

Théoden and Gandalf were speaking, and I heard Théoden say, "Éowyn I have seen, and you as well, and loyal Háma, and yet I have not seen the one that I seek after the most. Where is my son Théodred, for surely he must have heard the news of his father's awakening?"

There was a pause, and then Gandalf said softly, "Théodred is dead, my lord, for he took a grave wound at the Fords of Isen and was brought back to Edoras before he passed into the twilight-land. He is buried, and perhaps later you must go to his tomb, and bid him the farewell that you both were denied in life."

Théoden's aged face went pale and haggard, and his eyes dropped to the floor. "Alas that I should be the one to see these evil days," he said, choking back a sob, "where fathers outlive their sons and old kings wake from living nightmares only to see the last days of their house." He opened and closed his hand, staring at the papery skin of the fingers.

"Your fingers might remember their old strength better should they clasp your sword-hilt," said Gandalf.

Théoden blinked back the tears, and I turned nervously to Éomer, unsure if we should have been standing to listen to the secret counsels of the king and the wizard. But he put a finger to my lips, and then turned away and squared his shoulders, waiting. I could not see the expression on his face, for the tangled gold curtain of his hair hid it from my sight.

Théoden bent to fumble in the dusty shadows beneath the throne, searching for his sword, and then straightened in irritation. "Where has Gríma stowed it?" he growled.

Éomer left my side, and went to our uncle. Háma stepped up beside me, and we both watched as my brother said, "If you have need of a sword, dear lord, take this one. For it was always at your service, and still it is." Without more words he knelt, and offered the hilt to his king.

Théoden frowned. "Éomer, how comes it that you walk free? Did I not give the order to have you imprisoned?"

"It is my doing, my lord," said Háma. "I heard the order that Éomer was to be set free, and so I did. His sister the Lady Éowyn and I sprung him from his cell, and brought him his sword."

"To lay at your feet, lord," said Éomer. "No matter what the Worm would have had you believe, it was never once raised against you."

_Please, _I begged my uncle, without words. _Please, do not shun your nephew, sister-son and heir, he who has given so much to serve you that you will never know. _My heart ached for Éomer, for to be turned away by Théoden at this fragile juncture would be more than I myself could bear. Yet Éomer remained unmoved, kneeling at the king's feet, and he stayed so still that I thought I could see the very air shimmering around him. His head remained bent and he did not rise.

"Will you not take it?" said Gandalf.

Théoden moved as one awaking from a deep dream, which he still yet was, and he looked at his hand as if he did not know it. Then he reached out and took the hilt from Éomer, and the sword glinted razor-keen in the sunlight, and he slashed through the air with a sound like a fierce and terrible song.

"Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!" he said, as if to himself, whispering the words to a half-remembered prayer, the words that had once stirred the blood of men to fire and glory. "Dire deeds awake! Let horse be bridled, let horn be sounded! Forth Eorlingas!"

Then he stepped to Éomer's side, and lifted my brother's chin with a gloved hand, and said, "Take back your sword, sister-son! Return to your place at my side, and now, Gandalf, give me your counsel, for I am sick of the lies of Gríma."

I stepped back, and breathed again, for it would be well. The tide had turned with a swiftness that stunned me. The war was not over, for indeed half Rohan was emptied to hold back Saruman's advance, and Helm's Deep was besieged and called for aid as soon as might be sent. But something had gone right, and Théoden had taken back both Éomer and I to his breast, and the House of Eorl emerged from beneath its tarnish and shone out again.

--------------

I watched also as Háma brought Théoden his sword, the blade that Gríma had taken from him and hoped to claim for his own. It was a kingly thing, with steel as dark as a rain-laden cloud, rippled and folded back many times into a broad-bladed greatsword, set with green gems and gold trim, fitted within a heavy leather scabbard inset with cloisonné and gilt, rich beyond knowing and the thirsty drinker of orc-blood in its time. It was Herugrim, sword of kings and the heirloom of our House, and my heart went soaring like a dove to see my uncle reach for it and draw it slowly from its sheath.

I slipped away as Théoden took counsel with Gandalf and Éomer, and stepped out as the sun became a glimmer in the darkling West, sinking into a band of blood-red cloud. I heard the familiar nasal whine of the Worm, as he begged clemency and made excuses. My blood went to fire and I prayed that Théoden would not be taken in again by his lies.

I heard Éomer's voice drop low in threat, and then the sharp tones of Gandalf rise above it. I did not, and still do not, know what was said, but the Worm went suddenly running past as a thing possessed, and did not see me or pay any mind to me. He scrambled into the stables and then out again astride a black stallion, an ill-tempered thing that had killed two stablemen in the past month alone. It had been discounted from the _éoreds_ as unfit, and I hoped the thing threw the Worm and shattered his lying throat.

And then he was gone – no, truly, it could not be, but it was. He was gone from this hall and hearth, leaving a stench behind that blew with him on the stiff wind that whipped the banners and pennons of Meduseld to outthrust fingers that sparked the night with bursts of color. I stood there and felt cold tears run down my cheeks, and yet this time, it was not in fear and pain, but a joy that threatened to shatter my heart.

--------------

There was a great feast that night. Gandalf sat at table with Théoden, and with Legolas the Elf and Gimli the Dwarf, a strange pair of bedfellows as ever there had been, and yet there seemed a rapport between them, one the tall pale immortal, as slender and ageless as a beech-tree, and the other the short gruff mortal, bearded and brusque and yet who could wax so poetic when his thoughts turned to the Elf-woman Galadriel, the Lady of the Golden Wood.

He spoke to my brother of her beauty, and this took me aback, for Dwarves and Elves were long at odds with another. Yet Éomer laughed, and promised that if he should see Galadriel with his own eyes, he should judge her the fairest of women, and Gimli warned him only half in jest that if he should do otherwise, their friendship would be at an end.

Also with them was Aragorn son of Arathorn, Elendil's heir and the bearer of the great sword Andúril, an heirloom twice that of our own Herugrim, and it was to him that my eyes strayed most. He drank lightly and ate heartily but not overmuch, as if unused to the smell and taste of true food. He spoke with Gandalf and with Théoden, and his dark head was bent in intent attention to their counsels.

And I? While this great panoply of heroes sat to table and drank ale and laughed and rejoiced in victory, where was I? I was there to serve the king, the role I had filled before, and brought him meat and drink and saw that it was neither too hot nor yet cold. That he smiled at me and called me _sister-daughter _cheered my heart but little. I had expected something better than the role of a serving-woman, even if I knew better than to hope for the coveted place by his right hand. I did not know if I dared speak.

I brought the ceremonial cup of mead to each of them to drink in turn, and lastly I came to Aragorn, who sat unsmiling beside Théoden and whose eyes seemed far away and restless. I wondered where his mind strayed, and if I could ever aid the anxious charting of his thoughts. "Westu Aragorn hál," I said softly to him, and lifted the cup so he could grasp it. As he did, his hand closed briefly over mine, and I trembled and grew strangely weak at his touch. I would have been a serving-maid for the many years of my life if I could have been one for him.

I was shaken and I turned aside, leaving him to drink from the deep cup of kings, and he did, and handed it back. There seemed more unease in his manner, and he did not look up again at me. I felt a stab go through my heart, and I retreated softly to my safe cove of shadows and waited there until I might be summoned again.

After a time Éomer saw me, and drew me down beside him to eat and drink, and I picked at the trencher and nibbled but sparsely on the great feast that had been prepared to celebrate Théoden's revival. I was hopeful that I could plead with him, and have him allow me to ride forth when they made for Helm's Deep early the next morning.

At last I found his ear, and put the question to him, and he wiped his lips with a linen napkin and regarded me thoughtfully. "Nay, I cannot grant that, Éowyn sister-daughter," he said, "for your use is too great to me for me to allow you cut down in battle. Stay here, and warm hall and hearth for us, draw us homewards when the fighting is done."

"My lord!" This was supposed to be a joyous day, the greatest of my life, and yet it had taken a dark turn, one that I could not countenance or fathom. Surely he must remember who had nursed him through his infirmity, who had come to his side at all hours of night and day and done her best to find him sweetmeats and strong wines and all the other impracticalities his bewitched heart desired. Surely he must believe that he owed her this, at least.

"Nay," said Théoden again, gently but with no less finality. "For Éomer and I shall ride afield, and who is to lead the people of Rohan in my stead? Is there one that the people shall follow without question, sister-daughter? For these are evil times and I would not leave the care of my kingdom in the hands of a dullard or a weakling."

Éomer had had several mugs of ale by now, but his gaze turned calculating and sharp as it bent upon our uncle. "You must name a temporary guardian, my lord," he said, "but who?"

"I cannot spare you, Éomer, and the people may trust in the House of Eorl," Théoden answered, "but you are the last heir of that bloodline and you must ride with me upon the morning's breaking." He turned to the hall at large. "Who then shall lead?" he asked.

Háma spoke suddenly from the far end of the table where he guarded the king's repast. "Éomer is not the last of the House of Eorl, my lord," he said. "There is the Lady Éowyn, his sister, who is fearless and strong-hearted and loved by all."

His warm brown eyes found mine across the hall, and then I understood that this included him as well, that he loved me and always had and would, but would never venture a word nor expect me to take notice, for he was a guard and I his lady, as far above him as if I was a star in the firmament. It made me feel odd inside, for I had never known or looked, and wondered how many times he had quietly walked behind me to ensure that no Worm or wretch troubled my passing. But then I could not speak, for Éomer was heartily backing my selection and Théoden seemed about to ratify it.

The people were shouting in support. I turned to my brother, aghast. For I might have been cheered to know that he thought so well of me, but everything had gone wrong. Nothing was to change for me. Instead I was to bear witness to the unfolding and the renewal of my House's splendor, and yet I was to touch none of it. I was the serving-maid and the watcher as before, and now I would be truly alone, the only living thing in a hall emptied as everyone who lived there grasped for glory. I was coldly and unbearably furious.

Théoden had me kneel before him, and I did, and I accepted from his hand a sword and a fair silver corselet fitted for a woman, better work than my rusting mail and glimmering almost elvishly, something pure and strong to befit the Queen of Rohan, as I would be in truth the instant he departed these walls. But I could not forgive him.

--------------

I slept badly that night, that night which should have been counted among the most joyous of my life, and hot tears leaked into my pillow, and I muffled them away with the sheets and denied that they ever held any power over me. Tears once come were too eager to come again, and I rolled back and forth and felt the repressive dryness burn my eyes.

I rose with the sun and dressed, as richly as I knew would please Théoden, and was there upon the veranda to see them off. The battered walls of the Deep wanted new men, and it was there that the Riders were going, over a thousand of them, bearing bright swords and burnished mail and hearts alive with new-kindled hope. For their lord was alive and in his right mind again, the Worm gone from the wound, and they rode with him and Éomer his heir, sister-son, fair and strong and loved, to lead them into battle where they would gladly die for him.

I stood frozen. I watched Aragorn most of all, for I was too furious at Théoden and Éomer to spare them a glance. It was unfair of me, and Éomer pleaded bitterly – and silently, for he spoke not a word and I read it only in his eyes – for me to forgive him. But I did not. I could not. My joy tasted of ashes and my reward for my faithful service was to watch silently and acquiescingly as the glory left me behind.

There were so many of them, and their horses as well, and their banners flew sharp against the rising Sun. Warhorns sounded and glory beckoned them, and there was singing and thunderous chanting, and Théoden stepped up into the saddle of Snowmane, his white stallion, with the deftness of a much younger man. Aragorn mounted Hasufel, and Legolas Arod, and Gimli went before my brother on Firefoot. They rode to the head of the column, and beckoned with naked steel, and the Riders answered with a lusty full-throated cry.

And I? I stood on the porch and smiled for them, when inside I was breaking into more pieces than ever. I was alone, truly alone, and I should have been glad, for that meant that I was also without the Worm to trouble me. But I was left as the mistress of a deserted city, the keeper of a dying flame, as Théoden used his newfound sanity and strength to ride away and leave me in shadow.

Éomer glanced back once or twice, and I knew that he wanted me to forgive him with my eyes, so that he might ride out with my blessing. But I withheld it – let him feel the thorn twist as deep in his heart as it twisted in mine!

The Riders called and sang, and "Forth Eorlingas!" rumbled against the hills until they shook. I stood there and watched the great plume of dust that the earth spurred up at their passing, and there I remained until the echoes died from the hills and left them silent and bathed with the fading glow of the death of the day.


	6. Éomer – The Hunt and the Hornburg

CHAPTER SIX

Éomer – The Hunt and the Hornburg

My days had seemed long and dark until now when my king emerged, as the sun from behind a cloud, to bring light to them again. The cool westerly breeze streamed in our faces as we rode, and the great thunder of hoofbeats drew a veiling murk of chaff and dust from the well-worn road. I rode at their head, a king's nephew and heir and trusted counselor once again, and my heart was like to break with joy and relief. I rode helmetless, and my hair streamed gold and wild in the wind.

Before me Gimli the Dwarf clutched nervously at the pommel of Firefoot's saddle, still not entirely at his ease when astride. I had slept and fought and lived ahorse, and it was as natural to me as breathing, but I laughed and reassured the anxious Dwarf that I would not let him fall. Aragorn rode at my right, and Legolas at my left, and the only man who came ahead of me was my king and uncle, Théoden, who rode with the sunlight dying his white hair yellow, giving him an impression of true youth restored.

He had cast aside the rich rotting garments that he had festered in while the Worm whispered to him, and he was dressed as a king, in high-collared tunic picked with elaborate embroidery and long cloak that streamed in heavy silken folds over Snowmane's hindquarters. High were his boots and sturdy his trousers, and the worn golden crown on his head had been polished to swallow the most light from the glittering diamond sky, which was overrun with more than it could use. Herugrim was belted at his waist and he lifted a gloved hand to sound the charge himself, the low thunder of the warhorn rolling out in waves to herald our passage.

We were wild and drunk on gallantry, and we rode hard until day began to fail and we passed under the white-gilded peaks of Thrihyrne. The land was green and fertile where it had gone unspoilt by the tramping feet of orc-incursions, and terraced hills fell before us into a deep valley guarded by high stone sentinels. Night came in fullness and in truth, and we scarcely slowed. The company passed in darkness, and still the horns sounded, and here and there torches flared to life to guide our way. We became an army of ghosts, clad in stout mail and boiled leather, and the deep green cleft echoed with the song of our spears.

The wind raged above us, but in the fastness of the valley, it was calm. It went well for us, but the peace was broken by an uneasy expectation. Scouts returned and reported that wolf-riders from Isengard were abroad in the valley, and we had the sense that we were watched, always watched. Once or twice we scared up bands of Orcs, and bent our minds to slay them, but they fled before our steel and were swallowed by the darkness.

Aragorn and Legolas still were with me, and Gimli had returned to Arod, his familiar mount, so I was free to ride hard ahead. I never strayed too far from the host, for I knew well the fate of unaccompanied riders. Behind us in the darkness there were other torches lit, and the clamor and babble of far-off orc-voices; we were followed. We brought fresh enemies to the Deep as we brought her reinforcements.

Aragorn glanced back, and although he showed no visible fear, I sensed that he was troubled. "It is a great host," he said, "and keeps at our heels like a cur."

"We must not delay," I answered, and set my heels to Firefoot's sides. "If we hurry we can reach the Deep within an hour."

Night had just tightened its hold on the land to a deep darkness when the valley broadened and deepened beneath the pounding hooves of our horses. A river carved great chunks from the canyon-walls, and then it dried to a great muddy plateau that lay bare beneath the wheeling stars and the yellow curve of the Moon. At the far end, wedged in a narrow box-slit of rock, was Helm's Deep, the keep of Erkenbrand and which now lay besieged by the Enemy, or had been in the recent past and would shortly be again. We trailed our foe behind us.

The Deep's walls rose high and stark through the war-streaked night. We came to the causeway, a sweeping arch of stone that led through the weary gates, already printed deeply with the brutal crush of the Enemy's battering-rams. Here we dismounted, and led our horses in file up the ramp, careful not to attract the notice of the orc-scouts who had arrived in advance of the host. But here we were lucky, for a great raft of cloud had blown up quickly from the East, and scudded over the sky, veiling star and moon from sight and leaving only a thick unleavened darkness that hid us from all eyes as we passed into the Deep.

--------------

Once there I quickly sent a number of my éored to hold the Deeping Wall, for we would soon have need of them there. The air was restless and the soldiers waited half in eagerness, half in dread for the arrival of the foe and the commencement of the battle. I saw Legolas standing with his longbow in hand, and Gimli fingering his axe, and from farther down the valley I could hear the shouts and thunder of the advancing army.

Torches burned like small pits of flame among the dark marching shapes of the Orcs. With them came the wild men of the Dunlendings, and the huge black-skinned Uruks of which I had first seen and fought mere days ago. They carried with them siege-ladders and the White Hand of Saruman, flown ghostly in the night. They spoke with one voice, and it rose to a shuddering roar that rattled the ground.

I saw that we were gravely outnumbered. All Isengard had been emptied, all Saruman's considerable skill and ingenuity turned against us and determined to crush us. I quickly called the archers to their positions, and Gamling Erkenbrand's lieutenant did the same, and Théoden and Aragorn amassed the men quickly and placed them where they could do most good. Then I drew Gúthwinë from its sheath; it came free easily as if eager for the slaughter.

The Orcs wasted no time with subterfuge; there was no way they could pass unnoticed. As soon as they were in range they fired, and heavy black arrows flew in a thick and deadly rain to prune Rohirric archers from the high stone curtain-walls. Battering rams assailed the dike and the Deeping Wall, and the gates of the Hornburg itself. War-horns blended with the sounds of shouting, and the defenders cast down arrows, stones, knives, anything that would cut through the great beast-horde and keep the walls standing another moment.

The Orcs gained the wall, and almost the gate, and Aragorn and I fought side by side, hand to hand with them, Andúril and Gúthwinë clashing together against the twisted blades of the enemy. Gimli called out in the strange dwarf-tongue, a battle-cry of his own sort, and hewed their necks with his axe, and laid waste in a widening circle about him wherever he went. The bow of Legolas sang, and so did those of the archers, and arrows flew in a constant lethal hail to send the Orcs screaming to their death in the dark stone vales of the Deep.

I fell into the numbness of battle. I did not think or yet process with any reason, and yet I saw the scene unfold before me with the clarity of a fevered dream. My sword rose and swung and caught and sank, and beside me Aragorn did the same, and whenever there was a brief respite in the foes we leant wearily upon our steel and waited for the assault to renew, and in this we were never disappointed. There was a never-ending legion.

All I heard was the ringing clash of sword upon sword, shield, and far too often, the wet smack of splitting flesh. I tasted blood and salt and I was so thirsty that I might have been cutting down the Orcs to reach a rain-barrel. I danced with them, and they did their best to keep up, but they did not, and could not, and then I cut them down and sent them to hell to join their accursed brothers.

At one point the gates came close to falling, and Aragorn and I ran together, and slipped through a small door in the rock, and carved and cleaved together as our weary voices rose again to a hoarse shout of defiance. Orcs fell like rain before me, for nothing could withstand Aragorn and I, the king and the king's heir, both bearing swords that were thirsty for blood and had already seen much of it, yet could never be sated.

The Orcs had brought with them a dark devilry, and this they used to bore through the outer defenses, for it exploded if a torch was put to it and heavy chunks of stone lay strewn where they had violated the Deeping Wall. Aragorn and I went individually to each company of men to lend aid where it was needed, and again and again, the Rohirrim cast down the invading host.

And yet we were weary, for we had had no sleep this night, and I wondered how long I could keep my judgment and my reason before I gave myself up to the pure madness of battle and fought out of instinct until I was cut down like a dog. For there was the berserker in my blood, and in times like now, when embroiled in the fire and madness of the fight, it threatened to rise beyond control. I fought and fought and raised my sword even when I thought my arm was deadened to stone and would move no longer.

Late in the night the call came that the Gate was in dire peril, and I went there with speed, leaping down from a low wall into the midst of the foe, soaked with sweat and the brief rainstorm that had blown up from the veiling mist of cloud. The Company defending the Gate shrank steadily as their bodies were cleaved with the dark swords of the foe, and the ground was slick with blood.

It was hard to keep my footing, and I skidded to one knee as I took a blow from a particularly vicious Uruk. They were all around me, and my arm was numb, my muscles torn into blazing pain from the long fighting. For a moment I saw a long dark tunnel with the grim specter of death at the end, and for the first time all night, I began to believe that I would not hold through until sunrise.

"To Lord Éomer!" I heard a voice call, thunderous above the crashing song of iron, and a torch blazed from somewhere high above. A sizzling hail of arrows rained down from the sky, and then behind the flame there came Háma, and Gamling, and their men, and they screamed wordless defiance as their swords rose and fell in a long susurration of glittering iron, and they gave me a moment to recover my feet and my breath.

Then I plunged back in after them, and Gimli was there as well, and his bellow of "_Khazad-ai-menu!" _could be heard above the pinging sound of the rain and the clash of arms. His axe rose and fell and I steadied my grip on the sweaty hilt of Gúthwinë and cut down an Uruk, spitting him like a pig for the roasting.

Háma was overwhelmed by the horde, borne bodily backwards and pinned against the Gate, arms outstretched and hair blowing in his eyes, and still fighting empty-handed even as the Orcs swarmed him. But his armored fist was no match for the swinging black arc of a blade, and I saw the moment as it cut him from shoulder to hip, and opened a great dark gash through his chain-mail hauberk and leather surcoat, and he fell without a cry.

I reached him as Gamling turned around to viciously beat back his friend's murderers, and his brave efforts gave me half a second to clasp Háma in my arms. His face had gone pale and there was no light in his eyes, yet his mouth moved and he whispered, "Éowyn," before dark-winged Death came to claim its grim tithe, and he fell from my arms to land heavily on the causeway.

I could not delay a second longer, and yet I could not bear to leave him to the ravages of the Enemy. But a renewed wedge drove me apart from him, and then I saw him no more. Even now I cannot bring myself to imagine what befell his body after his spirit had fled. Later we would find him, and could only imagine the torment. When we buried him before the high glowering walls of the Deep, there were many cuts on him, bloodless deep gashes made by cruel intent after he was already dead, as the Orcs lost themselves in butchery.

But that would not be until later, and now we were hard-pressed. We could not win back to the Keep where Aragorn was, and I heard the ringing shimmer of arrows slicing the dark damp air. I remember little from now, for the fury in my blood had come loose, and the screams fell and clattered away to the ground without entering my ear, and I saw the foe and yet I did not, for they were all alike in my hatred for them. We were cut off and we could not win, and yet I still lived. My mail was thick with filth and blood, and a dozen small wounds pricked me like sparks, but nothing enough to fell me.

And then suddenly it was over, and Aragorn stood alone on the remnants of the Wall, high above the taunting remnants of the scattered Enemy. I could not recall what had happened between then and now, but somewhere in the night we had been parted, and Gimli the Dwarf and a company of men and myself had been driven into the Glittering Caves to hold against a relentless host. We had meant to come back once the fighting was through, but then another battalion sensed our weakness and tested us sorely, and it was there, high in the refuge of the Deep, that we stood.

Dawn was breaking red in the east, and a golden light thick as butter lay on the cresting slopes of the mountains. Aragorn was a small dark figure silhouetted against the burning sky, yet his words, and that of the foes, came to us clearly enough.

"Where are you, you cowards?" the enemy host jeered. "Where is your skulking king? We are the fighting Uruk-hai; bring him out and let us have our sport. We do not stop the battle for dawn or evening; we are the fighting Uruk-hai."

"Go back," said Aragorn. "Bear this news to your traitorous master, and it is that the host of the West has been mustered, and rides against him. Leave now, or else none of you will see another sunrise. Not a one among your number will be spared."

"And who will kill us?" they shouted. "The pitiful horde of bleeding Horse-boys it pleases you to call Riders? We are the fighting Uruk-hai; we have breached your Hornburg gates and we will break you all. This is no parley, for you have nothing to say. Stand still and let our archers take a good mark at you."

But Aragorn did not answer, and a power and a kingly flame was revealed in him as he remained there on the walls, and some of the wild men among the Enemy's numbers fell silent, in fear and in doubt. But the Orcs laughed, too far gone in blood-lust to notice or care, and a hail of black arrows whizzed overhead as Aragorn leapt lightly down.

"Come! Come!" Gimli called, fingering the edge of his axe, which had seen and cleaved a goodly number of orc-necks through the night. "We must get back to him, Éomer! That gate is weak and like to fall, and he will need us!"

"Yes," I said, and drew Gúthwinë, which had scarce had a moment to rest easy in its sheath since the worst of the fighting had passed. We stood in the eagle-aerie of the keep, for we had won out from the caves and now our perch was the high tower of stone that crowned the Deep's defenses, ringed with a bristled parapet of crenellation and arrow-slit, and scarred with the marks of the enemy's siege-ladders. Great chunks of stone lay scattered about us, and I mustered the men, and we had just begun our desperate push back to Aragorn when many things happened at once.

The broken gate fell, and the hard-charging Enemy host ran in amid the thunder of falling timbers. Men cried and men died, and the dawn rose fair and savage. And then the great horn of Helm Hammerhand shook the valley and brought defender and enemy alike to a brief standstill, and then the silence was filled with the shouts of Gandalf, come in the hour of our need with Erkenbrand and a mighty host, and the tide of the battle turned, and there upon the blood-stained stone of the Deep, we had our victory.

The Orcs and Uruks shied from this new foe, and they turned away and fled like the cowards they were, dropping weapons and armor and anything else that might be lost to speed their passage. Yet as they reached the mouth of the valley, they found no easy way to scramble back to their master. There was a thick curving green line there, a forest where no forest had stood before, and these were the trees that might be found in Fangorn, heavy-branched and draped with moss, twisted and clad in twilight-bark, their roots reaching into the barren ground like grasping fingers, and they swallowed the orc-horde silently.

There was something not right about them, something old and wild and terribly sentient, and I quickly gathered my men and persuaded them not to follow the fleeing Orcs into the trees. The battle-fever was still up in some of them, and arrows flew to cut down the stragglers, leaving corpses that their fellows tripped on or ignored altogether.

But I put a quick stop to that; the battle was over, our enemy routed, and to shoot them in the back was no fair fight. The last of the Orcs vanished through the trees.

Then something odd happened, which was saying a great deal in this new day of broken enchantments and White Riders, of Númenor's heir standing to fight beside the Rohirrim, and a Dwarf and Elf taking bread and counsel together. The trees convulsed as if in great pain, and a swift dark shadow flew winging on the wind as if it were a plume of smoke, and ghostly screams came from within the prison of their branches. And of the orc-host that had gone in beneath the deathly green eaves, not a one was ever seen again.

--------------

Upon the muddy plateau Gandalf the White met with King Théoden, and Aragorn and Legolas there were as well, and Gimli and I came last of all, and there we all met together beneath the clear-eyed light of another day. Our losses were grievous, but the Enemy's were the worse, and we had snatched a hard-battled victory from the presses of near-certain defeat. We rested a while, and drank a little water, and gave thanks for our fortune.

After that it was cleanup work, and it took a great toll on limbs and bodies already wearied with the long fighting. Carcasses of Rohirrim and Orc alike were heaped in great piles like wood-kindling, and shortly that was what they became as we made pyres, burned our dead with solemnity and ceremony, and their dead without. Torn banners of the White Hand fluttered on the ground, and these accursed scraps we burned with their bearers. The valley of the Deep filled with a thick haze of smoke, and my eyes stung and watered as I worked.

Théoden told me to go, and take a moment to rest, and I rolled myself in my cloak and fell down as if dead in the cold stone heart of the Deep. Even here there were corpses, stiff and sightless, and I, a living man, slept among them as profoundly as if I was counted among their number. Dark dreams troubled me and yet I remembered nothing of them later. I woke to the sun sliding lower in the sky, and rubbed the grit from my eyes, and went to join my men and my king.

Before the day was done we left the Deep, for evil work had been done there and our foe was fled from us. Yet the cleansing and the harrowing were not yet finished, and I grasped wearily at the pommel of my saddle and pulled myself astride, to take up my position at the head of my battered éored and ride alongside Théoden. He held the reins lightly and moved well; he had taken no hurt in the battle and for this my heart was glad.

The sinking sun reflected in his clear eyes and upon his crown, and Snowmane and Firefoot whickered as if speaking to one another. The two of us, uncle and nephew, king and heir, warrior and warrior, rode together beneath the eaves of the unnatural forest, and Gandalf and Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli came after us at the head of the remaining host. Then the trees covered us all and the Deep vanished in the curve of the valley.

I was deeply uneasy about riding through there, for I remembered well what had happened to the Orcs and had to wonder if the trees possessed a similar taste for man-flesh. It was emerald-green and fey beneath their spreading eaves, and Legolas rode slowly and looked aside often as if listening to whispering voices that only his elf-ears could hear. The roots grew vast and bare, thrusting upwards like a punching fist, and the leaves were broad and veined, overgrowing their branches and draping down in trailing ropes of ivy. The mist hung close and the moss ran deep. It was if my every unease about Fangorn had been realized and magnified, and I kept a tight rein on Firefoot's head to keep him from startling.

Once I thought myself alone, and frightened badly before realizing that I had only ridden through a narrow green vale between two ancient branches. I was a man and a warrior, and yet this forest unnerved me such as I had never been before. A screaming host of Orcs I would face down, and relish the chance, and yet a forest had me searching nervously for flickering shadows and spirits. I was as frightened as a boy told too many ghost-tales by the hearthfire.

Legolas fell behind us, and I saw his long thin hand reach out as if caught in a dream to twine about the lush falls of ivy and leaf. The soil was black with water and richness, and it squelched to a frothy loam of mud as it was beaten with the constant tramp of passing hooves. The long column of Riders passed beneath the woven branch-ceiling of the trees, and once or twice I started as it seemed to me that I caught a glimmer of the whispering that Legolas listened so intently to.

For the trees were undoubtedly speaking to one another, and understandably I made no sense of it. It was an old tongue, distant and wild and something between the creak of branches in the wind and the scream of a forest in a full-throated storm. It sent cold shivers echoing down my spine and left me in a sweat and dread of apprehension, torn between wanting to dismount and run, and to turn Firefoot back and gallop hard to the Deep, which now seemed a place of safety and light compared to this.

"Éomer!" said a soft voice, and I saw that Aragorn had ridden up close by my side. He reached out and placed one hand on my arm, and his touch was a comfort, something human and alive that cut through my increasingly fevered delusions. "Do not listen to the trees, for Gandalf will not let them hurt us. They speak to themselves, but they have no care for our blood. Ride untroubled."

I took a breath and smiled, and steadied myself in my seat. "I must be more tired than I thought," I said, "for sometimes I fancy that they move. They seem almost human."

"Nay!" said Aragorn, and laughed quietly, and lifted the reins from Hasufel's neck. "They are not human in the slightest, if by human you mean that they speak and move. These are the Huorns, as they are called, and they are the trees that first the Elves awoke and taught to be sentient, yet they have gone wild now. There is no humanity about them; they wheel in the world to the sounds of their own pipes and such is it that I wonder sometimes if it is Man that imitates Nature, as if Nature first walked and spoke and Man took it from them."

"And yet they will not hurt us?" I said nervously. The memory of orc-screams and the convulsing branches was still raw and new in my thought.

"Nay," said Aragorn again, and lifted a hand to point through the encroaching gloom ahead, broken only by the bright pale beacon that was Gandalf, who rode by Théoden's side. "They are minded by the Ents, the tree-herders. They are the oldest of all, and they still remain in what we would call sound mind. Yet they have been asleep for many ages, and only now do they wake again."

"_Ents_?" I said. "I thought them a fable."

"Many of those come now to life again," said Aragorn serenely, and his dirty hand reached briefly to touch the sword hung at his side. "Look ahead, son of Éomund, and see the fables walking before your eyes."

I saw nothing at first, and thought that he was making some sort of ill-advised jest. We rode out from beneath the eaves of the wood, and the valley fell wide and open before us, terraced with narrow by-ways and treed swathes that climbed up the high peaks. At the far end there stood the walled ringfort of Isengard, and the tower of Orthanc sank its smoking fang into the sky, and the stars fell before its great black prongs. I still saw nothing, and felt sure again that Aragorn spoke of something that was a veiled mystery to those of us without the far-seeing blood of the Dúnedain.

But then from the twilight they came, and at first I thought them more of the half-waking Huorns. But they were not. They were vast and tall as trees, with bark-like skin and twigs for fingers, branches for arms, and moss grew on them, and leaves, and one or two had the nest of a bird perched above their wise depthless eyes.

The ground shook where they passed, and some were oak, others chestnut, still others rowan, beech, fir, ash, their wood-skin smooth and grained as might entice the finest axe-man to cut them apart. Yet not even brave Gimli would have taken an axe to them, for their grasps were strong and the prospect of their rage a terrible thing. Long must they have slumbered in the green deeps, yet awake and open-eyed they walked beneath the gathering darkness, and one stride took them further than several of a man's. Gandalf was speaking quietly to one of them, and the Rohirrim drew up behind him.

Ahead I heard my uncle say, "_Herders? _But what are they, and what do they herd?" He seemed anxious, and Snowmane pawed the ground nervously and chafed at the bit, eager to be gone. I edged Firefoot closer, to hear the answer from the wizard.

"They are Ents, Théoden King," he said, "and they are the woods-masters, the oldest and the greatest, and the trees are ever under their command. Yes, look upon them, son of Thengel, for you have seen the Ents and the legend lives again. Now, come! Let us away! There are leagues to ride yet and business to be done at the end!"

The wizard rode without saddle or bridle, and yet Shadowfax stood quietly while his master spoke to the Ents, and then stretched out his neck and ran when the conversation had finished. Truly he was a remarkable horse, the pride of our House, and still I felt that old nagging pain that Gandalf had taken him from us. But then Firefoot tossed his mane and whinnied and fought at the bit, and I let him have his head, and the Rohirrim issued from the wood in a great galloping stream, and we rode down into the valley and left the queer wild forest behind.

--------------


	7. Éomer – The Voice and the Victory

CHAPTER SEVEN  
Éomer – The Voice and the Victory

We made camp by the low muddy banks of the river Isen, and here and there campfires flickered to life as the men warmed a little ale and bread. I tied Firefoot's reins to a slender branchless tree, and went among them and ate a little with them. I spread my blankets near the larger of the fires, and went to sleep immediately although I thought to stay awake and think of the day's events.

I dreamed sickly and vividly, and woke in a breathless lather, to find that the fire had gone to embers. I pulled myself groggily from the warm blankets and stabbed at it with a stick, could not spur it to renewed life, and had to waste time fumbling clumsily for my flint and tinder-box, for the night was chill and silent and my men were stirring as they felt the cold. I could not allow that; they needed their rest.

So I bent over the derelict fire-pit and struck and struck until my fingers were scraped raw, but at last I coaxed a thin tongue of flame, and built a nest of kindling and tended it until it was built strong again. Then I fell back into sleep and dreamed again of a swift shadow and the snuffing of stars and moons, the last nightfall on the woods and streams, and the descent of the creeping darkness.

I woke again, and the darkness had been given flesh, and the men were watching nervously as a great impenetrable shadow marched in slow and stately procession nearby. Some grasped for weapons, yet Gandalf warned them against it, and we held our uneasy quiet as the thick shadow flowed by like a sluggish tongue of molten rock. It was either the marching Huorns or a straggling enemy-host, and to this day I know not which. We remained quiet until it had gone, and then I slept for a third time and with no less deepness. I was so weary that I did not think I would ever feel my old vitality again.

In the morning we woke and rode again, and all day the smoke gusting from Isengard grew stronger. It was noon by the time we emerged from the vale, and entered through the breached wall, and rode into what had been Saruman's mighty fort.

I say _what had been _because Isengard was in ruins. The many war-machines lay in shattered pieces, and pools of water lay deep among the pitted ground and the shattered rock. Bodies of Orcs lay everywhere, and broken branches and tangled bracken floated in the murky current. Stonework had been ripped down, great chunks of masonry lay scattered and despoiled, and many small fires burned like witch-oil among the dark gray wrack and ruin. Flotsam and jetsam from the slaughter bobbed through the water and caught at aimless moorings.

The fire in the deep forges was quenched, and storehouses sat silent and broken, provisions and weaponry spilling indiscriminately through the water. In places I saw the gleam of a violated treasury, or the pale stone teeth of a flooded cavern, or the shattered timbers of a broken bridge, and for all Isengard's mechanical mastery, it was a copy, a shabby imitation.

I had never seen the Black Tower, and nor did I wish to, but Saruman's master was Sauron, and Barad-dûr must be what he had built his fortress in the shape of. Everything that must be black and grimly fascinating for Sauron was now wrecked and washed-away for Saruman. I did not mourn his losses. In fact I only wished that I could have had a hand in their inflicting.

The water splashed at my boots and legs as we drew nearer, and then two small figures leapt up from their perches atop the stone wall. They had been having themselves a cheery celebration, for they were smoking as vigorously as a pair of chimneys and eating from a basket which they had heaped with apples and smoked meats and any other delicacies they could get their small hands on.

They were – I did not know what it was that they were, but they were short, barely half the height of a man, and had curly hair and furry feet, and wore sturdy plain clothing, trousers and shirts, cloaks and scarves, yet neglected to include shoes. The nearest of them made a courtly bow as we drew a halt before him, and said, "Welcome, my lords of Rohan, to Isengard!"

"You young rascals!" shouted Gimli from his mount behind Legolas. "A merry chase you've led us on, up and down the breadth of the country, and to battle in the meanwhile, and every day the thought of what the Uruks might have done to you, and now we find you feasting and smoking without a care in the world! Where did you come by that pipe-weed?"

"You speak for me, Gimli," said the Elf, laughing, "but I would sooner hear how they came by the wine."

"As for both," said the Halfling, "the larders of Isengard are surprisingly large and well-equipped for such a dark and dusty haunt. Yet they are broken open now, and I can fetch whatever it is you want. We are here by the orders of Treebeard, who told us to keep ourselves from mischief, and to hail the lords of Rohan when they came."

I smiled at his words; he looked a simpleton but he clearly was not. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli were cheered to see them, and dismounted and went to speak with them, and to hear their tales. Théoden and I rode onwards, through the sloshing dirty water, and went to make the circle of the broken wall.

There were many shattered stones, and indentations as of might have been made by great pounding feet, and here and there snapped branches lay piled thickly against the grooved dark walls of Orthanc. It was sinister and unknowable, no less dangerous for being ruined, and I felt a cold fury at its master, who had waged such long and untiring war on Rohan and who had taken so many lives of men, better men than he, traitorous and oathbreaking slime that he was.

"Show yourself," I muttered to the oblivious spires above, and had the white wizard heeded me, there was little that could have stopped me from drawing an arrow and chancing my aim at a hundred feet straight up. But the balconies were deserted, and there seemed to be nothing living. If he had survived the assault, surely Saruman must be closeted with the metal and wheels of his own inventions, for to leave the tower was to run afoul of a large enemy horde.

We made a slow circuit of the damaged tower, and then another, and at each time I called for Saruman to show his face. Yet I was no wizard, and he did not listen, and might have laughed himself to breathless tears to hear me thinking so greatly of myself. I knew little of wizards but I did know that the greatest of the Istari would not lower himself to trouble with the headstrong second-choice heir of a lesser house of men.

Each time Saruman ignored me, as I thought he might. But on the third time about, I had an unexpected visitor. Théoden and I had drawn up in the shadow of a ruined eave, and there we were talking quietly and discussing what was next to be done once we had finished with the Enemy, and we chanced to look up at the same time. On a balcony some ten feet above us was the hunched creeping black form of Gríma Wormtongue.

Théoden's face went cold, and he stared without expression at his false and runaway counselor. I stared at him as well, but my own face was far from cold; I burned hot with rage, for in all the land there was only one person I hated more than Gríma, and that was his master. My hand reached up without my volition to the tattered quiver on my back, and I ran my fingers longingly through the goosefeather fletching of an arrow.

"No, Éomer," said Théoden. "We cannot shoot him here, unarmed, although my heart might tell me to do so." He cast a dark glance at Gríma, who had not spoken and who seemed to be doing his best to hide from all sight, including ours.

"I do not care," I said viciously. "Here is the man who used his leechcraft to reduce you to a groveling beast, something whining and witless who might have gone about on all fours, while he schemed to take your kingdom for his own. He plotted to seduce your niece and to dishonor your house, and you speak to me of _fairness?" _ My bow had been drawn from its leathern hook on my saddle, and I was already testing its strength.

The Worm started as if kicked, and gazed down at us with unreadable black eyes. I set an arrow to the string and started to draw, but Théoden placed a hand over mine, and said again, "_No, _sister-son, this is not my will."

It chafed bitterly at me. The Worm was an easy bow-shot away, something even a raw novice could have made without difficulty, and Théoden's confounded protection of the man who had brought such wrack and ruin upon our kingdom made me angry.

Gríma always grew bolder when there was no threat of reprisal for his words, and he knew that so long as Théoden was there, I could not shoot him. So he slithered to the railing of the balcony and said obsequiously, "It cheers my heart to see you in restored glory, Théoden King. For always I have been your counselor and protector, and I knew that this day would come."

"Silence, cur!" I snarled at him. I could not hear his silky, sinuous, cunning voice without being seized by a deathly fear that Théoden would fall again under its spell, that it had already begun. The Worm flinched but did not retreat, and gazed down at me with a strange light in his eyes, half-hooded under pale bags of skin.

"So it is you, my lord Éomer, and temperamental as always," said the Worm instead. "Tell me, my lord, how goes it with your sister, my fair lady Éowyn? Is she still as much a cold castle as ever, closed and gated and refusing to open her keep to any man? Does she dream of glory and yet freeze in her loneliness, while she whispers her fury to the night as it crawls in to swallow her?"

"_SILENCE!" _My voice rattled like thunder against the black stone, and I was about to do something foolish; he had goaded me and I had lost control, and I was furious with myself for letting his poisoned barb sink, for that was always how he gained his control over men. But I could not stand there and listen to him speak of Éowyn.

"As my lord wishes," said Gríma, and stepped back from the balcony. My hand trembled on the string, and I thought the arrow would slip. "You shall give my good wishes to your sweet sister, shan't you, Éomer? Sweeter still she would have been to me, and might be still, once these mad trees leave us, and my master has us free again. I shall keep company to him until our release, and then we will go back to Edoras, and then I will have her."

My teeth peeled back over my lips, and Théoden said something in a warning tone, but I did not hear it. My finger snapped on the string, and the arrow snarled up through the air, and somehow Gríma managed to duck. The arrow caught in his ragged black clothing, but not in flesh, and his eyes went wide and the sneering triumph faded from his face. Always he was a coward, flinging his barbs hither and yon but frightened of any reprisal, and he turned his lying tail and scampered inside the dark recesses of Orthanc.

I was shaking with fury, and Théoden glanced at me with disapproval, but had the Worm lingered a second later, my aim would not have been so poor and my second arrow would have taken him through the throat. I had imagined it many times, a day in which Théoden fell into death, and I rode out and did not know, and then Gríma came to put his soft pale hands over Éowyn and take her down to earth with him, hide her in his worm-hole and have his way with her, raping and ruining her until the proud steel-sheen daughter of the House of Eorl was reduced to a rotting shell. It was a thought I could not bear.

"Éomer, calm, calm," said Théoden urgently. A red mist was descending before my eyes, the berserker blood in me, and I fought and twisted to keep it safely tamped down. It would avail me nothing to lose my mind here, and only too easy for Wormtongue to reappear and throw a knife at me, something that I might fail to see in my rage. I swallowed painfully until my sight was clear again.

"Why do you stop me from killing him?" I said, raw and impassioned. I leaned my head against Firefoot's sleek neck, almost frightened at my hatred. It was the sort of strong emotion that could take a man to pieces and leave him in broken shards if he was not careful, and it warred within me with its opposite, the same depth of my feeling for my sister. Hate and love alike churned inside me and I bent over and thought I might vomit into the dark waters.

Théoden's eyes were calm. "I know it pains you," he said, "but I do not stop you from killing him from any sort of concern for him, for I know of his falsity and treachery and his crimes against our House. It is because he is yet a man of Rohan, as accursed as he may be, and I cannot yet permit him to be cut down in cold blood, undoubtedly though he deserves it. And perhaps one might say that an arrow is too swift for him, that it is better to leave him in there to rot and reek with his lies, and grow bloated and unwary on them, and to clash with an angry wizard, and to find death a welcome relief and to no longer shun it when it creeps hungry into his hall. I know your anger, sister-son, for I love Éowyn no less than you, and would not hear his whispering lies against her. But come now, our work here has been done, and it is best that we go to find the others."

--------------

Gandalf, Aragorn, and the others had finished their words with the Halflings, and with the great bearded Ent-herder called Treebeard, or Fangorn, the master of that very wood which the Rohirrim thought to be cursed, but had the good sense not to say to its keeper's face. I thought now that perhaps we could return to the Deep, and finish the burial of our dead, or else ride to Edoras and glean a few brief days of happiness before the war renewed its march on our borders. But it seemed that Gandalf would have one last errand be done, and when I heard it, I wanted it as well. He sought out the master of Isengard.

We rode through the water to the base of the pillar of Orthanc, and there Gandalf called for Saruman to show his face, and again and again he did not. This wizard was as slippery and lying as a fish, and smelled as pleasant as one besides, and the sooner I saw him, the sooner we could get about to revenge ourselves on him for what he had done.

Many minutes we waited, and Saruman did not appear. But then we heard a voice speak as if from mid-air, and it sounded gentle and aggrieved, as if we had done it unnecessary hurt and stayed longer to trouble it like a thorn in its flesh. I saw the faces of many of my Riders go blank and ensorcelled, and they stared upwards unseeing as if they were men in a waking dream. Even my uncle seemed to be caught in by it.

"Why now?" it said. "Why have you come to me, my lords? For the fighting is over now, and your brave men chafe to ride home, and yet you bend your course here, when you might be speeding homewards and returning to your own hall. But here you are, O most noble and worthy Théoden King, and beg to treat with me. I am honored and know not how to reply."

Théoden's face shivered as he fought against the persuasive rich gold of the voice, which fell down like a heavenly shower and bathed us all in its gentle spell. I was taken again by terror – beneath the glimmer and the honey lay the black dart which had sunk into my uncle's heart once before and might so easily do so again.

The voice continued to speak, and I struggled to find my own. Every moment the Riders seemed to move unconsciously closer to Saruman, as if he held open a glimmering window of escape from the darkness which somehow had covered them upon Gandalf's approach, as if he was the shadow-caster and Saruman the one who could strip them away. I fought desperately for words, and then they came to me, and I spoke.

"Must we listen to this old conjuror with honey on his forked tongue?" I called out, hoping to shatter the spell-bonds which had now woven very thickly about my men, who sat silently astride at the foot of the tower and gazed with faces as glowing and empty as the moon at the white figure above. "The meddlesome traitor who sent his forces against us and killed our good men? Why are we so quick to believe him, and to cast aside the words of Gandalf, who has long guided us rightly? Saruman is an enemy of ours – remember the grave of Háma in the Deep!"

"Young firebrands speak much of what they know little," said the Voice silkily. "Hear me, Éomer son of Éomund, for should you ever become a king, you must not cast such damning words against those who would be your allies. You will need them, for you will find a throne an uncomfortable seat, you who come to the royal heirdom by deceit and death. I see your reign as short, and your life as shorter."

"You must see now," I called out, having the sense that my words struggled feebly through the still air where the wizard's flashed and soared like flame. "He threatens me, and calls it advice! This is no friend of Rohan!"

"No friend of Rohan? But I am," said Saruman earnestly, and for the first time I could see him, a tall figure cloaked in white standing on a high balcony on the black face of Orthanc. "Have we not been long allies, Théoden, you and I? Can we not have peace?"

"We shall have peace," said Théoden at last, thickly and uncertainly, as if his tongue had been held prisoner for some black purpose. "We shall have peace!" he said again, stronger, his voice ringing out with the thunder of the King of the Mark. "We shall have peace when you answer for the burning of the Westfold, and the slaughter of the men, women, and children there! When the bodies of my soldiers, hewn as they lay dead, heaped like stacks of cordwood before the ruined gates of the Hornburg, are avenged, we shall have peace! When you hang from a gibbet in your window for the sport of your own crows, we shall have peace, Saruman the _White_! Perhaps I am a lesser son of great sires, but you have torn down my House, and there will be no peace until you are held accountable for it!"

My heart soared. He would not listen. He was restored in truth, by the grace and power of Gandalf, and more of the soldiers seemed to be casting off Saruman's spell.

The Voice snarled, and it had lost its sweet poison-gloss, a skill which the master had given so well to the servant. Now it croaked like an old crow, and the soldiers looked awake, and alarmed. Saruman had come to the edge of the balcony, and his words rolled out like the shaking of the ground.

"Gibbets and crows? _Dotard! _What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor with their dogs? I see I am mistaken in your strength. You are an old feeble man, childless, hopeless, and brainless, and soon you shall be lifeless, for your time is spent and you shall have nothing but dust to taste in your mouth as you fade into shadow!" Saruman snarled. His hand clutched his black staff like a claw, and his face was gray and drawn, frozen into a bitter mask.

Gandalf spurred his horse forward, and raised one hand at his fellow on the balcony. "Saruman, your staff is broken, and you are cast from the Order," he said, and there was an explosion as the staff scattered into pieces, with a whiff of brimstone-like stench and smoke. "Go now, and trouble us no further."

I found myself riveted to the scene, wondering what punishment Gandalf could give him, and if Saruman would be dead at the end of it, which was the outcome I wished for, yet no one had given me a hand in the choosing and there was most like a reason for it. I waited, and so did the men, and everything seemed in that moment balanced on a most delicate knife-edge. We thought that Saruman would call down the heavens, or cast a spell on us with renewed strength. Yet he looked jaundiced and sunken-eyed, and he hissed at us through bared teeth and then vanished inside.

We had turned our horses to go, and to leave the prisoners of Isengard to stew in their own venomous juice under the cold eye of Treebeard, when there was a crack from above. A heavy dark globe of cloudy crystal, with a fire burning deep in its heart, came crashing down from the tower. It vanished into the water with a sizzling splash, and one of the halflings – Peregrin Took was his name, a gentleman great in valor if short in stature, paused and then leapt down to retrieve it.

Gandalf took it quickly from him, and muffled it in his cloak, and for some odd reason, he seemed well pleased. "A parting shot from Gríma, I fancy," he said, "poorly aimed and poorly judged besides. For he could not decide if he hated myself or Saruman more, I think, yet Saruman will come off the worse for it. For there is little else in this world more precious than the treasure which the Wormtongue has just hurled down unknowing."

A shrill shriek, almost otherworldly in its rage, came floating down from the tower, and it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Firefoot shied and snorted to be off, and I held him back tightly.

"Saruman has just discovered his loss, it would seem," said Gandalf, and a smile seemed to play about his thin lips and in his clear far-seeing eyes. "Come! Isengard is no longer business of ours, and we have much of it to finish elsewhere. Some must return to Helm's Deep, and others to Edoras, and we must go in small parties so that our presence is not noted."

That night we camped a little distance from Isengard, and in the middle of it, my dreams were broken with a faint far-off shriek, which grew closer and colder in distance and in malice, respectively. For I woke to discover dark tidings, which dogged at our steps no matter how hard we tried to shun them. Peregrin had been overcome by curiosity and gazed into the Seeing-stone, the palantír, and now something came flying low overhead, calling hoarsely for its prey. The Stones were not in and of themselves evil, but this one had long been used to no good end, and the flaming Eye of Sauron could still almost be seen in the damp night air.

A great coldness overtook me. I shivered and shivered and could never feel warm. Gandalf shielded us somehow, I believe, for the hunched shadow astride the winged fell-beast did not see us there. It was another thing that I had not believed existed, but was forced to accept; Gandalf told us that it was a Nazgûl, one of the nine Kings of Men brought to ruin by the enchanted Rings that Sauron gave them, and forever bound to do his will and seek out those of interest to him.

While the night was still dark Gandalf and Peregrin departed; to where, they did not say. All I saw was a swift-retreating white shadow that marked the departure of Shadowfax to the South once the danger had passed, and I could only guess that the wizard had his own business and knew what he had set his mind to. Then I slept again, surprised to be untroubled by dark dreams, and when morning dawned I felt almost whole again.

We made ready to go, for there were still matters to settle in Helm's Deep, and we had little time in which to mend them. But something gnawed at me like an old toothless dog, not hard enough to hurt but persistent and unyielding, and finally I could not ignore it longer. The Riders had made a little headway when we were called back and told that there were other riders behind us, swift-moving and grey-cloaked, and although they might not be Orcs, there were many men in the service of the Enemy.

I saw them sweep nearer, and I pulled Firefoot to the head to challenge them. "Halt!" I called. "Who rides in Rohan?"

The lead rider of this new company uncovered his hair, which until then had been cloaked with a dark hood, and it was long and black and framed a stern face with a thin-set mouth and grey eyes. I did not know him, except to think on his resemblance to Aragorn, and if my thoughts had summoned the man himself, Aragorn rode up beside me and a wide smile broke across his face. "Halbarad!" he cried. "Of all the joys this is the least expected!"

I was mightily confused, and in fits and starts the story emerged that these were the Dúnedain Rangers, Aragorn's own kin, and had ridden from the North to aid him. They spoke long in a language which I did not understand, and at the end Aragorn turned to me as if this had sealed something that had brewed long in his mind. "I will ride with you back to the Hornburg," he said, "and the Grey Company shall accompany us. But after that my way must part from yours, Éomer my friend. I must take the Paths of the Dead."

I stared at him. "You cannot mean that. The Dwimorberg is a dark and cursed mountain and none who venture there ever return. If that is the case then our friendship must be at an end, Aragorn, for I will not see you again under the sun of this world."

Aragorn only smiled faintly and did not answer, and swung up again lightly to the saddle, where his skill almost equaled that of the Rohirrim. All the long way back to the Hornburg I did my best to plead and reason with him, but he would hear none of it, and would not answer when I entreated to know what had brought about this decision in him. But he would only say that he must, and could not give me anything more substantial than vague promises. The company of Rangers fell in neatly with the Rohirrim, and green cloaks and grey alike flashed under the thin glow of the cloud-banded sun.

We came to the Hornburg, and finished what we had left undone in our haste to ride to Isengard and settle matters with its master. The fact that Saruman still walked the earth left an uneasy shudder in my heart, for I felt that he had not yet finished with all the evil it was in his power to do. Even cast out and imprisoned, an Istari was a formidable foe. I wished still that we had killed him, even if it meant cutting him down unarmed against the doors of his own citadel. It was no more than he would have done in turn for us.

Théoden and I had a different road to take back to Edoras, where we had called a muster of the Rohirrim four nights hence, then the one that Aragorn and the Grey Company would take. They promised to spend a night in the city, or at Meduseld with my sister and to give her our greetings, but no matter how I pleaded, they would not be turned from their goal of riding the Paths of the Dead. Legolas and Gimli, who were also counted as friends to me, had resolved to go with him, and my heart was heavy at the thought of threefold parting with the hunters who I had grown to love after they had first sprung like lightfoot ghosts from the thick grass of the Rohirric plains.

Théoden and I, and our men, rode away before nightfall, and Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and the band of Rangers turned the other way. In the mud-flats before the Deep, I took what I thought would be my last parting with the heir to the Kings of the West.

"You are hope," I said, "hope to us, and fear to Sauron, who will not want to see you claim your birth-right. Do not do this, Aragorn. Do not throw your life away when we still need you here."

He clasped my shoulder, and there was still a smile on his lips. "You are counted friend to me, Éomer son of Éomund, and as long as I live it shall be so. I do not think that this journey is as rash as it may seem to you. For there are ways that I must take, and things that I must see done, and if all goes well I shall see you upon the field of battle."

He drew me close and kissed my brow, then turned back to take the reins of his horse, a shaggy stallion from the North that the Rangers had brought to him. "Brave Hasufel has served me without fault or failure," he said, "but I have my own mount now, and Hasufel must be seen homewards. May he comfort the widow of his rider, and crop long grass for the rest of his days in peace. Farewell, Éomer! May our paths lead us together again in less evil days! Good luck and swift speed hasten the hooves of your Riders!"

I bit my lip fiercely not to cry, as I would never show such weakness before my men. I mounted Firefoot and did my best not to watch, and then set my back to the Grey Company's passing, and rode into the mountains and knew that I would never see Aragorn Elfstone again. I wondered how to break this news to Éowyn. Then I wondered if she already knew, and if so, if her frozen heart which had warmed enough to care for Aragorn, would shatter into pieces at it.


	8. Éowyn – The Return and the Rangers

CHAPTER EIGHT

Éowyn – The Return and the Rangers

Five days the sun rose gold and set crimson, wheeling and waxing through the great empty sky, before they returned. Five days I was left as a queen, a cold and icy statue clutching to a temporarily inherited throne, before the men came back to take pity on me in my solitude, and for those five days I remember only little.

The first night my fury at Éomer and Théoden cooled, if only a little, to allow me to plead that they might be spared at the Deep. Aragorn my thoughts went to often, and in many and varying forms, as piecemeal as a chimera and as endless as time. I imagined him with me in the golden smoky hall of Meduseld; I imagined myself cloaked in white, rising to the cold, star-sheened tower of Gondor with him. In my dreams we pledged allegiance, and love, and gave each other everything else that man and woman can share, and he reached out with a glimmering hand and undid the bars of my cage.

The second day I heard scattered disputes, and did my best to dispense judgment in my uncle's stead. I sat on the steps before Théoden's throne in my long white dress and silver corselet, my hair held back with gilded bands, since I did not presume to the seat itself; I could not. It felt too much like finality. Théoden would be back to claim it, and to rise there would dislodge his shadow. I was still angered at him, but not enough to wish him death.

The peasants bowed before me, and called me "my lady," and some, feared of whatever theoretical punishments I might unloose, called me also "Queen Éowyn" and "Your Grace." The titles seemed odd and oily in their mouths, as if they sought to woo and soften me with shadowed flattery, and at once they reminded me surpassingly of the Worm. In a sudden nervousness I forbade them to call me anything of a royal bent; the familiar "my lady" or "Lady Éowyn" was all I desired.

I sat as the arbitrator of Edoras's grievances, and dispensed the penalties that seemed to suit, and hoped that I did not give offense. The peasants themselves seemed to accept my decisions, and blessed me in our native tongue; for within the halls of Meduseld, all business was conducted in Rohirric and Westron was not spoken, as a further vouchsafing of Rohan's borders. More than once we had uncovered spies this way, for they did not understand the language and their confusion showed plain on their face. When this business was finished I went to table, and ate but little and knew not to expect the Riders homeward.

In the night which led to the third day, I dreamed of fallen horses, and crownless kings, and lands crumbled to ruin beneath a ravening shadow. I woke in a sweat and paced about my chamber before I grew calm again, and did my best not to grant the creatures of my imaginings such power over me.

On the third day I went to walk about Edoras, weary of being left in Meduseld with nothing to occupy myself; in such times my thoughts went quickly to darkness and I grew restless and fearful. I walked in the thawing mud of the roads, as spring was coming and a the jagged sheaves of icicles rimming the gold-thatch roofs were softening and melting. Here again I was hailed in queenly style, and decided not to dissuade them; for they had known the House of Eorl only to rule over them, and now that I held the high seat, they must also transfer the courtesies to me. I let them; it was not worth my effort or theirs to tell them otherwise.

All the while my brother and uncle reaped more of the glory for themselves, and left me to wander around our city without cause or purpose. That night I again slept badly, and although the whispers of the Worm had gone, their echoes remained, and I wasted a goodly amount of time chasing imaginary phantoms from where they clustered about me thick as carrion-birds. I knew that this was only the first thrust of the war, and that more would come, and then a dark seed of an idea began to grow in my mind.

I did not allow myself to think about it seriously until the fourth day, and the more I mulled it, the more I could not see why not. As myself, I would never have the chance, and would be trapped here until I fell into the moldering chasm of age and infirmity. But _this _way… I would have at least a chance, if I went carefully and disguised myself well and slipped away to wash….

I had grown so absorbed in my thoughts that I slept poorly for the third night running, but this at least was not borne from the nightmares. Instead I was kept awake in a roiling, almost sickly anticipation, and my thoughts chased themselves around until morning. I could not see why not. When Éomer and Théoden returned, I was sure that we would soon see the beacons of Gondor, or the Red Arrow, both of which were means of calling us to fulfill the Oath of Eorl.

And then – well, the muster of the Rohirrim would be great and chaotic, and horses and riders alike swarming about in their haste to quit Edoras and ride to the aid of their old ally. Half the city or more would be emptied, and not require a leader, whether king or queen, for all their energies would be elsewhere. If the war was not fought, then there would be no need to settle disputes over women, or land, or cattle, or whatever else might be feuded over. And so, if the seat in the Golden Hall were quietly to fall empty, no notice might be taken of it, and tidings not borne of it until afterwards, and by then it should not matter, for either Théoden or Éomer might be riding homewards to claim it.

This idea consumed me and drove me half-mad, and I fought myself to keep my thoughts in the moment where they yet belonged. As myself I would have no chance, but as someone else I might stand one, and as long as it could ride a horse and wield a sword, Théoden would want it to go with him. He was a king, and knew many of the names of his men, but not all of them; the éoreds were as numberless as stars in the sky and only a Dúnedan, or perhaps an Elf, could lay claim to marking the paths of those. Dearly though I loved my uncle, and would be glad to die for him, I was also cheered that he did not have that gift.

A few of the retainers must have noticed my distraction, and asked after it, and I smiled and gave them the only excuses that I could, or that they would believe; I feared for brother and uncle and all good men of Rohan riding on the marches of the world's war. They smiled, content with its womanly sentiments, and at least they did not ask me why I paid no heed to embroidery; they had long ago learned my mind in such manners. Other women, other queens, might sit and sew a great silken standard for her men to bear to battle, but Éomer and Théoden rode beneath the white horse on green and I could give them no fairer token. For despite all recent happenstances, I did not believe that Rohan was as ready to fall as did our foes.

On the fifth afternoon I saw them coming, a great number of horsemen as would have been pleased to swell the ranks of Rohan. Yet these were no éored, and their leaders no Rohirrim-captains, for their cloaks were of grey not green and they rode in a long sweeping wave from the hills, and at their head came Aragorn, and my heart leapt high to see him. For he had taken no hurt in the battle at the Deep, it would seem, and now came back to see me, and for a little time we might tarry together and I might ask him – if then that failed I would have to fall back to my second recourse, but I was hopeful. For while with Théoden I had had no success, perhaps Aragorn would be more willing to count a shield-maiden among his number.

I came down to the yard to greet them, for all the world as if they were returning Riders, and many stern-faced, dark-haired men in grey cloaks bowed to me and called me "my lady," as sweetly as if I was their queen, and a vision of a day came to me when I may be in truth, for they were Aragorn's kin. So I smiled at them, and wondered what comforting words a lone lady could give to such warriors so that they would take heed, and remember well, and perhaps speak kindly of her later to their lord.

But through all the tumult my eyes searched most for Aragorn, and I knew he was there, for I had seen him ride in. At last I found him, dismounting from a horse that was not Hasufel, but rather a shaggy-maned, clear-eyed specimen that I later learned was called Roheryn. With him he bore a long pole, and a black cloth was wound about it and tied with thongs, as if it were a standard of sorts, and I felt my heart sink. For was I too faulty a woman to sew a banner for him, and had another done so in my stead?

He turned to me and smiled, and his heart seemed sincerely cheered to see me. "My lady Éowyn," he said, "it rests my heart to see that still well is the keeper of Eorl's House." He turned aside and said something in the Elvish tongue to one of his fellows, then turned back and said, "My lady, it pleases me to present my foster-brothers, Elladan and Elrohir, the sons of Elrond Peredhil." He beckoned.

Two men came forth from the crowd – I call them that for they were male, and yet they were not at all like the men I was used to – big, fair, broad-shouldered and swaggering. Tall they were, but slender and graceful as the icicles that yet rimmed Meduseld, and it was impossible to tell their age. For the light of wisdom in their eyes was anything save young, and yet there was no mark on them, for their skin was unblemished and unlined and their hair, which was long and dark, bore no streak of snow-silver. They were dressed in war-gear, mail and leather, and bore longbows and quivers of arrows, and upon each of their brows was a thin star of silver.

I could not mark one from another; as two mirror-images they stood before me, and with their fairness of face and their grace of movement I knew at once that these were the elf-kind. The only one I had seen previously was Legolas, who was also there with Aragorn, and it was still somewhat of a shock. For they stood there, and both made me courtly bows, and although their manner was nothing but elegant and humble, I felt somehow stained, a grubby, earthly lady wearing a dishcloth-dress, with tangled hair and uneasy heart. For their light was of great knowledge, and a never-ending life should they wish it, and they had walked in glades hidden to me and known many wonders. Before them I felt very insignificant indeed.

"Hail, my lady Éowyn!" said the first. "Fair indeed is the star of Meduseld! Aragorn has told us some of your beauty, and now our own eyes perceive the truth of his words. I am Elladan Elrondion, and this is my twin Elrohir, and we ride with our brother Estel to his war."

I flushed slightly, and gave him my hand from protocol, and he touched his lips to it and then straightened. His voice was slightly accented with a musical edge I supposed came from his own language, for although he spoke the Westron of the conversation well, he still did so with the slightest pauses, as if searching for the words. But he smiled at me, and there was merriment in his grey eyes, and he and his brother were not as grim as the many other Rangers about us, who were men and not Elves.

"Pray forgive me," I said suddenly, "to keep you at trifles in the courtyard when you have ridden a long way, and must be hungry for food and drink. I shall have the servants prepare us supper, if it pleases my lords to follow me to table in Meduseld."

--------------

There was supper, and ale, and roast meats and dainties, and it all tasted better for the fact that I was not expected to serve it. For the Queen of Rohan, however brief and borrowed the title may be, was at last the one held in high honor, and the servants carried the food to the groaning tables, which were near overloaded with all the Rangers sitting at them. I prayed we would have enough from our failing larders to cover it all, for they were many, and hungry, but by some stroke of good fortune all had what they desired. I was mortally afraid to examine the store-houses afterwards, for what tale would I bear Théoden if I had emptied Edoras's resources on strangers?

And yet strangers they did not seem to me, not even Elladan and Elrohir, for all seemed as merry as the war would allow them, and they often made toasts to me and thanked me for my hospitality. I did not dare sit in Théoden's chair at the center of the high table, for the same sentiments that had kept me from his throne, and it was there that Aragorn sat alongside me, and with him the sons of Elrond, and another Ranger called Halbarad, and long the four of them talked of strategies, and places, and they so often slipped into the Elvish tongue that I only followed half the conversation. I felt almost traitorous to be listening, even though they sat right there and did not seem to mind that I, a woman not of their kith and kin, was present.

At one time I finally plucked up the courage to ask Aragorn what he planned, for he had refused my offer of fairer housing and said only that if he and his company could pass the night at Edoras, he would count himself grateful. I had expected him to answer that he would ride for Dunharrow, or for Gondor directly, or for any other number of war-camps he could have named; if he made for Harrowdale, then he had come a long way only to speak to a lonely woman in her exile, for there was no road that led from Edoras directly to where he might have wished to go. But that was not where he wished; he had no mind for Harrowdale. He said, "Nay, my lady, I have not come by the wrong way, for tomorrow I ride by the Paths of the Dead."

I did not think I had heard him right. The Dwimorberg – the haunt of darkness and the fastness of ghosts? The cup that brimmed with ashes and despair and the bones that the stone gates hoarded? Aragorn, _my _ Aragorn, as only in the privacy of my thoughts I could dare call him? I must have gone snow-white as my dress, and I said weakly, "That is an evil road. You cannot go that way."

Aragorn looked sad. "Such counsel I heard from your brother," he answered me, "and yet my mind is set; the Grey Company shall pass by the grey-road, and there we shall meet our fate, be it good or ill."

"No, please," I begged. "No. You cannot. Stay a little and wait for my brother's return tomorrow, and then you shall ride with us, and Rohan would be honored to count you and your kin among its number. Please, my lord, do not do this."

Aragorn smiled at me, but sorrowfully, and would not answer, and all my words fell on deaf ears. I ate the rest of my supper as if in a desperate dream, and one by one, my last bulwarks against infirmity and uselessness crashed before my ears. For if he would not aid me, then – then – I should have to bring myself to the last recourse indeed, and I would die sooner than stay behind.

Afterwards he went to the dark ramparts of Meduseld to walk a little beneath the rising moon, and I followed him out. Vividly I brought to mind my conversation with Éomer here, which had resulted in his arrest, and although I knew there would be no similar outcome this time, I felt indeed as if someone had been chained and bound, and that had been myself. My heart had gone raw and soft within my ironclad ribs, its ice melted to water, and I was afraid that I would debase myself before him with pleas and tears, soft womanish weaknesses that I dearly wished to avoid.

"Why do you go on this deadly road?" I asked him, and stood alongside him as he gazed at the deep murk that veiled the Riddermark.

"Because I must," he answered, "and because Sauron must be defeated, and had I seen another way, I would have done so. But never have I faltered from my path, and I will do as I must."

I said nothing then, and nor did he, and the silence deepened between us, alike and unlike, one a man, dark-haired and dressed somberly, and the other a woman, pale-haired and dressed in a bright white that belied her darkness inside. Then in a moment of bravery, I reached up and put my hand on his arm. The leather of his vambraces was cold beneath my fingers, and I saw worked into them the White Tree of Gondor, to whom even now Rohan's thoughts bent.

"You are strong," I said softly, "and brave, and men win renown that way. Yet even one brave man needs about him others. Why can you not count me among your number? I am no serving-woman, even if all I have done for many months is to wait upon the feet of the faltering. If they falter no longer, then surely I can be free of their shadow? It is my duty to serve my lord and land, as best I know how, and in these evil times, that is with my sword."

"Your duty is with your people," he answered again, and turned around to smile at me again, with that deep and faraway melancholy that lent a weight to his keen face.

"Long I have heard these words from everyone else," I cried at him, and felt the back of my throat burning as with tears – no! Not here, not before this man, I would not lower myself to weeping. "Must I always be a servant, to find food and bedding, to keep the house and sweep the floor, and wait, always wait, the long wretched _waiting _until the men return?"

"But one day none of them may return," said Aragorn, "and still we will have need of your valor to defend your home, for when an enemy breaches your keep, your last place of safety and warmth, then they have truly won."

I stepped back from him, and my fingers uncurled from his arm. "All you mean to say to me," I said, "is that I am a woman, and not even of a daughter of the House of Eorl could you believe the desire and ability to fight, when I should be mending clothes and tending larders. In these days, you can turn no willing soldier away, and I fear neither pain nor death."

"What do you fear?" asked Aragorn softly.

I paused, and then I told him. I had not meant to, for he had no words of comfort for me except the same dusty platitudes. But I told him of the cage, and the darkness, and my great fear that all valor and glory would desert me, and ride out to fetch it for their own, and then leave me to keep their house for them until they returned.

When I had finished, he said, "No, my lady. For this I could not grant without the will of your brother and uncle, and I must leave before they return. You may ask them, if you will, but I say to you, stay! You have no business with the Dwimorberg or with Gondor."

"And nor do those who ride with you," I flung back at him, "but they stay with you only because they would not rather be parted from you." I teetered at the edge of the abyss, of saying it, of laying my weakness bare, which I had long been loathe to do. But at last it spilled from me in a dark rush. "Because they love you."

He smiled for the last time at me, and did not answer, and then turned and left me. I saw, for the first time, no hope at all, no glory, no spark or a chance. I thought to die rather than be left to welter. Then I turned as well, and went from there, and slept not at all that night, and although I hated to do it, I sobbed long and desperately and muffled my cries with my pillow so that nobody would hear and ask me what was amiss.

--------------

In the morning I came out white-gowned, calm-faced, red-eyed, and heart-broken to see them off. For one last time I asked Aragorn about his intent to ride, and again he affirmed it, and again I asked to go with him. Again he set his will against me, and then I did something which I had hoped to never do. I fell on my knees before him in the mud, he grim and kingly mounted on Roheryn with the furled standard in his saddle-loop. Looking up at him, muddy and bereft of my dignity – he had not even left me that – I sobbed, "Please! I _beg _you!"'

But again he denied me, and dismounted to raise me to my feet, and to kiss my hand, and wish me good fortune. And then I wept there before everyone, and wanted to die with a vehemence that was not at all feigned. For my icy shell had cracked, and cracked again, and now it let the river run wild where it should have held it back, and tears oozed down my cheeks, chafed my eyes and cracked my lips, and I stepped away from them as Aragorn re-mounted. I might have put my hands over my face, but that was only to let the ones in the back, who could not see the tears glistening like cloud-sheen on my face, how desperately I had come undone before them. They must have thought me a woman indeed, sobbing to see the men ride to war, before trembling back inside to take refuge in her worm-hole.

Perhaps Gríma should have taken me after all! For in his grasp I would have been away from here, and would have many small knives and cunning poisons close to hand, and then I could use them as I wished as he snored in oblivion. For any woman can master a weak man, give him wine and smiles and soft touches, and yet everything she does, whether it is sobbing or stroking or outright and abased begging in the mud beneath his mount's hooves, will avail her nothing before a man with his mind set. For a moment as I watched them ride, a sickly, twirling moment in which the world seemed to come undone, I hated Aragorn more than I had ever loved him.

I stood there alone, fists clenched, sobbing as if my heart would break, as the Grey Company filed down and through the gates of Edoras, and set their course to the huge, glowering shadow among mountains, the Dwimorberg. I was truly alone, and without a soul to see, for my people were greatly frightened of the Rangers and had hidden themselves in their cottages until the strangers were gone.

Then as in a waking dream, or rather yet a nightmare, I turned and stumbled back inside Meduseld, and up into my room, and pulled the bolt with steady hands that did not belong to me. Then I lay down quite calmly on the bed, not flinging myself like a lovelorn girl. I drew the counterpane up to my chin, and turned over gently, and put my face into the still-damp pillow. Then, and only then, I began to cry in earnest, and I sobbed until I was sick.

--------------

I rose scraped glass-thin and raw as its broken edges, and knew that I would go then to Dunharrow, and meet Éomer and Théoden on their return from war. I took off my dress, and changed instead into trousers and hauberk, the clothes of a man, and over that I placed the corselet that Théoden had gifted me, and girt myself with the sword, and a helm went last over the long coiling flaxen rope of my hair. Then I took Ingelda from her stall, and left word of where I had gone, riding out on an errand to see back the Mark's rightful king.

The ride to Dunharrow was quiet, which I was greatly relieved for, and I came up and through and down the hidden paths of the woods. The jouncing of the saddle was a sweet memory to me, as in something I had long lost, and for a moment in the streaming air, I felt almost myself again, not the crying abandoned wretch that I had started to believe I was. The path narrowed to an arrowhead-shaped valley, and I rode down into it, and through the Firienfeld, and above me loomed the vast crosshatched road that led up into the precarious perch of the camp. Its stout stone buttress cut off the last glimmer of the failing sun, and shadows lay thick among the bracken. I guided Ingelda carefully, determined not to have her break a leg.

From the road I turned to the camp, and had the retainers there put up a pavilion, and make all ready for the arrival of the king. It was some minutes until I saw the shape of the éoreds materialize from the dusk, and then I mounted up again and rode over to meet them.

Across from me, half-veiled in falling twilight, were Théoden, and Éomer, and behind them their men, and with them a curious young man of some race I did not know. A halfling I thought him, one of the Little Folk, for he stood no higher than a man's waist, and the thick curling hair on his head matched the tufts on his feet. Yet he had an open friendly face and a charming smile, and I saw his eyes fall on me, and there was a kindness, and a concern, in them. I warmed to him slightly, for he seemed to be paying me close attention, and I would have smiled back at him

"Hail, Théoden King," I said, and prayed my voice did not tremble at the words. "All is prepared for your coming, and the Mark rejoices to have its king within its bounds again."

"Thank you, Éowyn," answered Théoden softly, and his old wrinkled face seamed into a gentle smile as he looked long on me. "Is all well with you?"

"It is well," I said, and felt a thin tremor creep up my throat and give silent lie to my words. No, _no, _I had shamed myself once crying before a great host, albeit one that did not know me, and here, before those who always looked to me for strength, and would be even more eager to leave me at home should I not display it, I firmed my resolve to go tearless. "Come then, and we shall sup."

Éomer nudged Firefoot forward, and he also smiled to look on me. Small comfort I must have been to them, a woman dressed as a man with cold emotionless eyes and a frozen pale face, but I saw love in his gaze, and loved him back for it, yet let nothing of it show. His face fell slightly at what he thought was my indifference, and he said, "Did Aragorn come here? Have you seen him?"

Why did he have to speak that name? Why must he remind me of what I had lost? "No," I said, and looked away down the Dimholt road. "I saw him yester-eve, yet he rode the Paths of the Dead, and he is gone from us."

"Alas for such evil words," said Théoden. "We had hoped that he might turn his mind from it."

And so had I, and pleaded to find dark Death under the mountain with them, and yet it had been denied, and denied again, and now I was left to live, however unwillingly. "Come," I said again. "It makes small sense to waste such food."

--------------

We ate, and spoke, and then presently the Halfling was brought and introduced to us, and Meriadoc Brandybuck was his name. He sat at table near Théoden, and seemed to listen intently to our counsels, as if one so short in stature could be numbered among the legions of Riders, and to come to Gondor with us. I sat there in a numb, unseeing haze, and once or twice Éomer put his hand on my arm and urged me to eat something. Yet I was lost in grief, here, too near beneath the shadows, and let only a few crumbs pass my lips.

Meriadoc, or Merry, as more often he was called, asked after the Paths of the Dead, and I told them that I had heard tidings that indeed Aragorn had gone that way after what he had told me; or rather I had heard that a great host clad strangely had swept by under cover of shadow and gone up the Dimholt to the Haunted Mountain. Talk we had, and fruitless words, and nothing had been made of it when outside there came a clamor, and raised voices, and one rose above them all, demanding to see King Théoden.

So he was brought in, and near me I felt Merry give a great start, as if the man was somehow familiar to him. He looked like many of the Men I had seen, broad-shouldered and black-haired, and a hush fell among the tent's occupants as he walked up before Théoden without expression. Then he fell to his knees, and said, "I am Hirgon, my lord, errand-rider of the White Tower, and I bring to you now the most grave summons from the Steward Denethor."

I knew what it was then, and Éomer as well, and every man in the tent did as well, for we all learned of the Oath of Eorl when still tied to our mother's apron-strings. It was the Red Arrow, the symbol of our need, and surely that was what Hirgon drew from beneath the furred drape of his cloak. It was long and cruel, fletched with dark arrows, and black also was the shaft painted, but the tip was a deep and bloodlike scarlet.

"So!" said Théoden, and I thought that his eyes went dark. "Your tidings are expected, Hirgon of Minas Tirith, and faithfully you have served your master to ride here so quickly, through a field rife with foes. The Red Arrow… it has not been seen in the Mark in all these years, and yet the Oath of Eorl is still held to our hearts and we will answer. Yet how can we gather quickly? Time is needed to muster our Riders."

"Time we do not have – you may elsewise find the White City in ruins," Hirgon answered him. "Denethor trusts in your coming, and will wait for your fulfillment of the Oath anew, but he has no time to spare. Gondor is besieged by Orcs and wild men and trolls, and the longer you tarry, the less chance is there that you will come to find the city still standing."

"A muster is set for tomorrow, and I will gather all that I can spare as quickly as I might," Théoden answered, "for I will not leave my holdings unguarded. But still, as little as you may like it, it will take time. It may be a week before you see the Rohirrim at your walls."

"A week!" Hirgon muttered, and he looked ill-pleased, but he smiled again at Théoden and said, "The Lord Denethor knew the Rohirrim would not abandon him in his hour of need. These tidings I shall carry back to him, if I can fight my way through the field of foes, and await your coming." He rose to his feet and bowed, and then slipped out through the tent, and into the darkness beyond.

Théoden after that dismissed us, and said to us that we ought to find our way to bed, and still I was sick and sore with grief and did not think I could sleep, nor did I believe that I ever would again. But as we left the tent, Éomer touched my arm lightly and said, "Grief you have in plenty for this Dúnedan Ranger, and I share it, for he became dear to me as well during the brief time of our riding. But Éowyn, if you might, you could smile again, and lift the hearts of us all. The men sense your dark mood, and it troubles them."

I looked at him, and my chin quivered. The fool, the glory-drunk fool, he knew nothing, not with visions of battles fought and enemies fallen at his feet, the song of horse-hooves and the idea of leading the éored that might break the lines of the siege of Gondor. But I managed to turn up my lips a little, in a shaking crescent-moon.

He let out a breath, and saw something then which he had not before, and said softly, "Oh, Éowyn." Then he held out his arms to me, and at last I went to him as I knew he wanted me to, and put my head on his shoulder. It was uncomfortable to lie against mail and the steel edges of plate, and yet I did not move. I felt his arms go about me, and I closed my eyes, and since I had no dignity left, and no scrap of dry land in the heaving sea of my tears, I cried then, and shook, and he held me. I clung to him, and he patted my hair awkwardly as if trying to gentle a horse, and at last I had cried until I was clear and empty again. Then we parted, and at last I slept without dreams.


	9. Éomer – The Road and the Ride

CHAPTER NINE

Éomer – The Road and the Ride

We woke to a still and oppressive silence that lay thick among the valley and roiled up in shadowy coils to ensnare the high lonesome aerie of Dunharrow and choke off the sun. It was as a great unending cloud, and shapes grew soft-edged and mysterious in the damp grey murk. Tents lost their roofs in the low-hanging cloud-belly and the ground was covered with a silver murk that veiled boots and legs, climbing up cold mail armor as if hungry for the rest. Horses reared and snorted fractiously as their handlers strove uselessly to calm them.

Even Firefoot, who had seen all number of dark Orcish sorceries, fought and stamped as I pulled the saddle down over his back. It was cold in the heavy murk, and although I thought that the sun should come to burn away the unnatural fog, it did not. It seemed as if a great rent had been torn in the side of the Dwimorberg, and down the long Dimholt road there had come riders, no living man but phantoms woven of fragile dead flesh and long-forgotten sorceries, baring rotten teeth and clutching rusted swords, to leave no trace of their passing and to bring death where they came. Had Aragorn failed to master them? I could not think of such disloyalty, but the fume was deep and silent and lent itself too easily to evil imaginings.

I lit a torch and led Firefoot through the camp to the hold where my uncle kept his tent, and found it already alive with the sounds of hushed and nervous chatter from within, last-minute strategies exchanged in low voices, as if the mist and murk would repress anything that sought to rise above its stifling mantle. I left Firefoot to crop some of the lush grass near the door and ducked inside, pulling aside the silken flap, and bowed out of long habit.

"Éomer, my son," said Théoden, and he smiled and seemed well-pleased to see me, for he had begun to call me _son _in Théodred's stead. Dearly though I wished my cousin were still alive to bear the appellation which only love and not blood had granted me, I knew from long experience that no amount of wishing could reawaken the dead. Théodred slumbered now in a simbelmynë-draped mound, and while the dead wandered in cold chasms, the living were left to finish their business.

I found myself wondering, briefly and impossibly, if even now Aragorn might see a pale face among the Dead Riders, and think it similar to one he had seen before, and wonder if it bore kinship to someone who he had once known… but it was not to be. Théodred's spirit would have gone to the halls of great warriors – not the cursed Dwimorberg – to rest without having to see another battle, and I was comforting myself with fancies. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs from it, and said to my uncle, "What is the meaning of this?"

Théoden glanced up with a small, almost sardonic smile. "This is no weather of the world, my son. This is the onset of our greatest darkness, and only a taste of what could come should we abandon our duty. This is the Dawnless Day, and it is a great fume sent out from Mordor. It covers the valleys and creeps in to smother us."

"Will the sun ever rise again?" said a small voice from a corner, and I turned to see that Master Holbytla, the indefatigable Halfling, was with us.

Théoden looked at him, and his eyes went almost soft. "I do not know, Master Meriadoc," he said, "and it seems to me that the Shire-folk should not concern themselves with the answers to such deep-reaching questions. You are too small to ride on the horses of the Mark, and my Riders must go as swift and unburdened as possible. I release you from my service, but not from my friendship, and at the least you shall come to Edoras and look upon Meduseld with us." He glanced up at me again then, and although the cataracts of age had come onto his eyes, and the splintering fineness of age had carved the skin of his face, he looked for a moment young and vital, Théoden Ednew in truth, sprung from the mists of sorcery to lead the Rohirrim to a final glory.

"Go, Éomer," he said, "and call the heralds. For we must make haste back to Edoras to muster the last of the Riders, and from there we must ride solely for Gondor."

I nodded, and turned to go, pulling my helmet back down over my head and feeling the chill dawn-breeze play havoc with the white horsetail crest. But as I left, I saw that Éowyn stood to the corner of the king's tent, watching with eyes that had been washed clean of everything to leave only a perfect and unsettling clearness. I had no more time to linger and judge more deeply, for my mind was bent upon my errand, but it sent a shiver down my spine.

Last night when she had cried in my arms, I thought her at last unburdened of her cares, a peace made between us, and she ready to return to Meduseld, to a place of safety amongst the madness. Yet as I looked on her, I saw no peace, and no relief, and nothing at all. Her clear fair face was wiped clean of emotion, her eyes unreadable as grey smoky ice, and it frightened me truly for a moment, for there was no spark of hope, no light at all, only the wintriness of someone forced to their last recourse, and in doing so, they sought nothing but the cold embrace of Death.

I could not get the idea from my head as I went. Gone were my sister's hot dreams of glory, and left in their place were freezing icicles which could shatter at a touch. I wondered if I could mend this, and comforted myself with the fact that at least she should have company at Edoras, and would not walk alone to watch for our coming. Perhaps it was only grief at Aragorn's loss, for which I could not fault her; I could not understand what had prompted the Heir of Isildur to seek his death beneath the Mountain.

She loved him; I ought to have seen it before. A light had come into her, however briefly, at his coming, and gone out like a torch quenched when he had gone. She saw in him something – perhaps a queenship, perhaps love, perhaps a life away from Rohan – and whatever she had desired from him, he could not return. Well, I thought uneasily, she was not the first maid to be scorned by a man she had desired to love, and would not be the first to take a revenge either. Although I did not think that to be Éowyn's way, nor had I ever seen her so sick with grief over a man before. I could not say what she would do.

She had seen twenty-four winters, was young, beautiful, unwed and unattainable, marrying herself to sword and spear and her desperate wish for glory. It was not necessary as a matter of state that she should take a husband, and the Lady of Rohan would not be wed to any common churl. Yet while some women would love the presence of a strong and devoted husband, and a warm hearthfire, and perhaps children to later run about it, my sister had never been that way. All she wanted was to ride as a man would.

I blew the horn to call the men to muster, and resolved to speak to Éowyn before we left. If she had truly abandoned all hope, and looked now only for death's cold black wings, then I was mortally feared to leave her behind, and yet I had no choice. Éowyn knew the need for her lay at Meduseld; as dry and ashy as the cup of duty may taste, she had long resigned herself to drink from it. It was this cursed day that was giving me such grim fancies. I would ride to war, and she would fight another battle at home, and should the Riders return, she would be there to welcome us, and perhaps in time she would find someone else to warm the desolation of her heart.

We turned from Dunharrow, and rode back to Edoras, and there spent only a little time waiting as the last Riders came in and made ready. A vast host we made there, as if we had sprung from song and story; many Men, fair-haired and green-cloaked, and the white horse of Rohan capering madly upon the stiff breeze, which swept the murk of the Dawnless Day hither and thither and still failed to disperse it. Mail rattled and spears and swords alike were taken from the armory until its deep shelves stood bare. Théoden went at its head, tall and proud upon Snowmane, and I rode there beside him.

As we left Edoras, I glanced up to see if Éowyn stood upon the porch to watch us go, but she was not there, and for that I could not blame her; this parting, which could be the last, must twist in her heart and she would never show the whole city her weakness. Though I went troubled in mind, I set the matter of my sister aside; I had other things now to see to. Before we left, I had surreptitiously checked the royal stables, and been relieved to find Éowyn's mare, Ingelda, was still there.

In a great streaming company like the breaking of a river through a weakened dam, we went forth from Edoras. Horns sounded, and fell dully against the great enshrouding thicket of mist, and banners waved a riot through the damp, colorless air. Besides the White Horse on Green there came the banners of other subsets within Rohan, and again and again the war-horns rang. All Edoras was emptied; it seemed as if the Riddermark had yielded all her sons for the fight and left the high plains untended. That made no matter; our business no longer lay with protecting the boundaries of our own lands. We left them behind to whatever fate would befall them, and then put thoughts of home from our minds. We turned, and went forth, and into the deepening gloom, and went to seek death and defeat, or life and victory, or whatever combination of it all could be salvaged from the Shadow's grasp.

--------------

Our plan was simple, and that was to take the West-road to Minas Tirith; a long way, but the straightest route as was possible, a wending path built between the two capitals and maintained by both Gondor and Rohan. For the first day we passed unmolested along its muddy coils, that day in which the Sun did not shine and we rode cloaked in ominous murk. There was little talk among the men and it became harder and harder to think of pleasant things; as the day went on, I felt my heart weighted as if with stone, and did my best not to let them see.

The day which had never dawned went on to night, and no stars shone in the great vaults of the sky. The Moon was a sickly, ragged ghost struggling to keep a foothold, and the Rohirrim passed in the shadow of both mountain and forest, and often down through long straight-shots carved through the high, thick grass. Where the Road tramped it down it was coated in mud, and at the end of that day's riding both man and beast were filthy.

We camped in the lower marches of the Riddermark, where we had begun to see the first faint silver glimmer of the Ered Nimrais away toward the south. This should have been heartening, for beyond them lay the White City, but they were as unreachable as the heavens, and I found myself sinking ever more into the weighted melancholy that seemed to have come with Sauron's unnatural fume.

Théoden called me to his tent, and we discussed things there, and sent a vanguard of outriders ahead of our host, to press on through the night and bring us tidings of the road ahead. It made little sense to forage on blindly, and the scouts swung onto fresh mounts and vanished quickly into the darkness. I tried to convince myself that they would return, but thought only of possible fates – each gloomier than the last – and the black arc of a swinging orc-blade, and tried not to think of how easily it could sever head from shoulders.

The men had made some bright sparks against the eager, hungry night, which had swept in on silent padding feet to press up against us in every place where a campfire or a torch did not hold it back. Food tasted dry and raw after its long day bumping in our saddlebags, and I choked down a tasteless strip of jerky and a stale hunk of bread. I sat with my éored at the fringes of one of the largest fires, and a few men went out together and shot a few animals. They skinned the carcasses and dumped the meat into the pot; what they did glean was lean and stringy, more like sinew than flesh, and yet it was eaten without complaint.

Grimbold and Elfhelm, two of the other éored-leaders, came to join me after a while, and Elfhelm handed me a skin of wine, from which I drank enough to wet my throat but no more; this was not the time to lose my wits in a soothing, inebriating torrent, as tempting as the prospect may be. We sat together and spoke little, and after much longer, began to feel useless, so we got up and went about the men.

I walked through the bedrolls, and exchanged a few words with the soldiers who hailed me, and ended up speaking to one soldier, younger than the rest, who had never been to battle before and begged me to tell him what horrors to expect, so that he might face them without flinching and not disgrace himself with cowardice. I sat down on the lichen-splattered boulder, gloved hands dangling between armored knees, and struggled for a long time with the words, for what could I say?

Did I tell him of the rise of the berserker blood, the harkening back to the days of the wild men, when the bloodlust overruns you and drives all sense from your skull? Of the blood, so much of it, crimson rivers, of never knowing how much of it there is in a man – or an Orc – until you run them through with your sword? How did I explain _that _feeling? Of how skin is stronger than you expect it to be, and you have to shove without hesitating to break it, and the horrible yielding sensation you feel when your blade goes home? The way blood will bubble in someone's mouth if stabbed in the heart, the short punched gasp if stabbed in the back? Should I explain the way it felt, the wet, tearing rip, of slicing heart and lung within the chest?

Did I tell him of how grown men can soil their smallclothes in fear, and how some shrink and fail, and others go wild? Did I tell him of the abominations I had seen done on battlefields, by friends and foes alike? Did I tell him not to be frightened – and yet that was the greatest falsehood of all, for no man in his right mind went to war unafraid, certain of life and glory to follow once the grisly knife-work was done. That was a lie upon the magnitude of one of the Worm's.

And yet did I tell him to be afraid? What sort of gift was that to unburden a young soldier's heart? I myself was nervous, perhaps, but undaunted, ready to find what would come. In battle you must not fear, and you must not be without it, and there was no way I could think of to explain that paradox to the young and anxious face that gazed so eagerly up into mine. The boy, Hrothar was his name, had the first strawberry-blonde wisps of beard on his chin, and I found myself wondering if he would ever live to grow it.

"My lord Éomer?" he said. "I meant no insult – I only wish not to embarrass my House, and – " He cast his eyes down. "I only hoped you could tell me a bit of what to – of what I might expect when we come to Gondor." He patted the nose of his horse, an older and steadier one, less likely to panic in the mayhem of a first battle – the last thing an untried warrior needed.

I sighed, and rose from the rock. "Blood, my lad, and shouting and screams, and a sense as if the world has come undone about your ears," I said, thinking vividly of my own first real fight. "And you cannot listen to it, or you will go mad. You must fight, and do not think about what you are doing, or else it will repulse you, and then you will fall."

"Y-yes, my lord." He ducked his head; I could not judge whether my scant words of comfort had been of any use to him. "Thank you, my lord."

I touched him on the shoulder and then turned to go. There was a horse picketed near Hrothar, and it was the great grey stallion Windfola, a brave specimen who had served many an éored with speed and faithfulness. He did not have an assigned Rider at the moment, as his last one had fallen at the battle of the Hornburg, and I was surprised to see him there. Yet every man who could fight did not necessarily possess a horse, and there was no use to have such a strong steed go to waste.

"Tell me, Hrothar," I said, "who rides Windfola, there?"

His eyes sparked with something akin to a sudden nervousness. "His – his name is Dernhelm, my lord. He is quiet – barely speaks to anyone, my lord. He's no trouble, truly he's not. My lord."

"It's all right," I said, smiling bemusedly at the sudden surfeit of titles. "_My lord _will not wear out its fashion soon; no need to overspend it. It was only a question – I like to know whose lives I lead into the maw of the Shadow."

"I understand, of course. M – Lord Éomer." Hrothar looked down, tracing the intricate knotwork on his saddle, which he had relieved his mount of for the night. The old stallion nosed for grass in the shadow of the gnarled roots.

"Is Dernhelm here?" I asked, after a pause.

"No, my lord, I think he went to fetch water." Hrothar gulped and started into yet another _my lord, _then seemed to realize that he had already gotten through that part, and swallowed hard instead. He smiled trustingly up at me, exposing buck teeth that nonetheless arranged themselves into something rather endearing, and added, "I don't want to keep you from your duties, my lord. Thank you truly."

I nodded to him, and touched him briefly on the shoulder again, and went from there, returning to the cleared patch of ground where the king's tent had been pitched. I slept that night in a bedroll beneath the silken canopy, and my dreams were fey and strange, and I did not remember them when I awoke save for a last lingering sensation of wrongness.

--------------

The next day broke as cheerless and colorless as the previous one, and it was a struggle to get underway as early as possible, when my stiff fingers fumbled uselessly at the buckles of Firefoot's tack. They were more familiar to me than my own armor, and yet I had to force my hands to work the cold leather as if learning it anew all over again. I cut myself on the edge of the pommel, and bit back a curse under my breath. Such times would come, but certainly did not qualify with such a triviality as getting a horse saddled. For Eorl's sake, I had first done it at the age of four, as my father Éomund held the bridle of a very old and placid pony that did not start when confronted with my clumsy attempts. I seemed to recall that Mother had been abed for Éowyn's birth, and Father had done his best, when forced from the room by the midwives for worrying too much, to compensate for it by schooling me. That was such a long time ago, it might have been also veiled in the mist.

I swung up and felt the faint ache come from long-abused muscles, but put them from my mind and lifted my helmet on, then shucked on my gloves. I was already moving as I did so holding the reins with one hand and wiggling my fingers into the glove with the other, as I called the men to formation. Horns sounded again, and the camp dispersed with remarkable swiftness, leaving scant traces there for an enemy to track us by. But what did it matter? We were a large and fast-moving host, and there was no trickery in our errand as we rode along the road. Here the mist aided us, for while we could not see far ahead, nor could anything that sought to spy on us.

Near nightfall – only distinguishable as a fading of the ever-present grey to a swift and unleavened black – the first of the scouts returned, bearing grim tidings. The West-road was held in force by companies of Orcs, strong and well-armed, intent on preventing us from reaching Minas Tirith. I wondered if Steward Denethor had heard any news of our coming, for Hirgon had rode off in great haste with his fellow and had promised to cut through anything in his path in order to reassure his lord. But they were few, and the enemies many, and that Denethor knew of our ride was no certain thing.

Théoden and I again discussed matters, and tried to think of another way to evade the orc-host. We wished to take no chances with open battle, for it would scarcely avail the besieged Minas Tirith if we should arrive with half our host, already decimated and bleeding from skirmishes along the way. We unfolded crackling parchment maps and traced possible roads to take, but everything we could think of led us far out of our way and added yet more delays to an already interminable wait. It must have been maddening to be in Minas Tirith just then, to be constantly reassured with half-whispers and promises, tidings of our coming, rumors fading to truthless legend, as all the while their enemies closed ranks about them.

We closed for the night with nothing resolved, worried and frustrated, and I thought vaguely of that Rider Hrothar had mentioned, Windfola's new rider Dernhelm, but could not bring myself to go hunt him down and talk to him. Doubtless my words of comfort would be as useless as they had been before, and it was selfish of me, I who needed to give so much to my men, but I was simply too tired. I went to sleep and dreamed again, and woke in the morning to the third day of gloom.

--------------

The orc-hordes were still ahead of us, and for now we could still proceed on the West-road, but we began to see signs of our enemy's presence. There were the quenched coals of campfires, and copses of trees hewed by heavy black axes, and the splatters of blood on the dirt where disagreements between them had soured to outright violence. The Rohirrim went with more care, and scouts circled ahead of us and bore us the latest tidings. The longer we rode that day, the more they failed to return. The darkness was close before us, and it was very hungry.

I began to long bitterly for the first touch of the Sun, or one sweet ray to remind myself that it still marched through the heavens, but the mist and shadow remained as stubbornly impermeable as ever. I rode open-eyed in the lead of the éoreds, at the side of the king who would call me son, and yet I was lost in grim fantasies even as I called commands and kept everyone in order. Voices seemed to whisper to me, and proposition me or threaten me, and I did my best to shut them out.

At our stop that night, Théoden and I at last agreed that our only option was to swing the host into Anórien, the vale of Gondor, and from there into Druadan Forest. I had never had a great love of forests – the trees pressed in too deep and choking for a man born and raised on the wide-open sweeping plains of Rohan – and Fangorn had only cemented this distrust, but I spoke no word of complaint. I did not have a better idea.

Many times I thought of Éowyn, and wondered how she kept herself in the lonely fastness of Edoras, which was certainly swarmed by the cloud lying thickly about the hill, and which must creep across the cold stone floor of Meduseld. I hoped she had company, and good company at that, for a heart sick and frozen with grief will give itself to strange ideas, putting up a ghastly semblance of cheerfulness, before using the small knife or the long leap, the body turned up days later. I could not bear to return to that – and yet death, for Éowyn, must seem the utmost cage. I hoped. I did not know. I could only pray.

We rode through tangled branches and strange green paths that coiled through Druadan like the pulsing veins of the great forest's heart. It did not misgive me as greatly as Fangorn had, and yet I loved it little. There was no whispering treeish sorcery here, but it was still too close and thick. Wet leaves trailed like damp drowned hands against my armor and in my hair, for the trees grew too near for me to wear my helm. I had removed it after the horsetail crest snarled in a branch for the fourth time.

Yet for all that, I had to decide that Druadan was healthier than Fangorn. Where the latter was sick and unnatural, breathing and sentient, the former was simply a forest, thick and disorienting, but strong and growing as trees should, without any hint of sinister intelligence. The air was sweet and green underneath the branches, almost strong and wet enough to drink in place of mead, and it refreshed spirits weary of Sauron's melancholic fume. This, I thought, must have been how the Elf Legolas felt in Fangorn, and then a stab went through me, for he had gone to seek death with Aragorn in the Dwimorberg, and I did not like to think of it.

Had I been less important to Rohan, I would have gone with him, and counted the twenty-eight years of my life well spent if I had died at the side of the Heir of Númenor. Yet I too had duty that could not be abandoned, and I did not count myself bereft, for there was still the chance that my life could amount to much more. I went to the campfire with some of my men, and drank a little water. I had forbidden them to cut down any live wood, and so the fires were built from the broken branches and desiccated driftwood that littered the forest floor.

Sleep came deeply and dreamlessly, and I woke to the fourth day of darkness without so much residual weariness. If, and when, the war was ever over, I intended to sleep for a week, perhaps two, perhaps even years like some tragic figure in a children's tale, and sleep without my sword in hand, sleep in the sated peace of my own chamber without worrying if an Orc-host should invade Rohan in the night. It was a sweet, sweet fantasy, but a fantasy all the same, so I put it aside and took up my place at the head of the column.

That day we came within sight of Eilenach Beacon, charred black from being recently burned, and took the winding road through the edge of Druadan. From here, however, the forest grew very wild indeed, almost as disconcerting as Fangorn, and we knew that to proceed farther without a guide would only leave us wandering and lost. So Théoden and I took our nightly counsel, and left the host to find their own beds beneath the dew-soaked eaves, and began to search.

The Druadan was rumored to be the haunt of the Woses, the Wild Men, and unlike the feral folk of Dunland, these were not on Saruman's side. Théoden and I thought to find them, and apologize for the grievances we had done against them, and beg for their aid to lead us through the Forest. Otherwise we too had run short of options, and that was almost unthinkable in this war. We would press on if we must, but I knew with a sinking feeling in my stomach that that would only lead us to ruin. We had stayed as close to the edge of the forest as possible, and had guided by sight and landmarks that we knew in Anórien, but from here the path twisted aside like the coils of a great muscular snake and thrust deep into the woods, leaving us without beacon or landmark. We had one hope, and that was to find the living incarnations of the Púkel-men.

We had gone without guard or escort, for the Woses were prickly with their honor and rightly so, for the Rohirrim had hunted them for sport before. It gave me a cold feeling in my throat to think of each small crumpled carcass, for each of them might be counted against us in our plea for help. So it was only Théoden and I, excavating in the dim reaches of the forest with one lantern between the two of us and Herugrim and Gúthwinë close to hand, in case the Woses should turn violent. To slay them was to slay our last hope, but we would not go meekly to our deaths. Had it come to that, our armor may have done more than our swords, for it is greatly unlikely we would have seen our foe. The Woses were cunning in wood-craft and rumored to use poison arrows; a swift finger on a string and even a strong warrior would be beyond the reach of the best medicines.

My footfalls sounded loud in the damp forest, and I wondered again if we could find our way back to the host. I held the lantern aloft, sweeping it through deep leaf-mold and rotting forest detritus, and somewhere in the dark mud at my feet, there was a swift small creek, undaunted in vigor despite being only the width of my thumb. Again I called softly, "Where are you, Woses? The King of the Mark would speak with you, and begs your aid. We seek alliance and friendship, and will repair for past grievances done."

I had begun to think that it was just a children's tale after all, that the Rohirrim had gone to their deaths in the verdant forest, or else would arrive at Gondor weeks too late to do any good, if indeed we ever found our way clear of the accursed wood. But then my lantern caught on something that was neither leaf nor tree-branch, and that glimmered with an odd liquid black light. The next second the thing blinked.

I leapt back with a startled cry, and managed to save the lantern from a tumble to the forest floor, where it would undoubtedly have ignited a fire and brought us all to further grief. With a deep rumbling groan the thing detached itself from its perch in the tree, and pulled free. It had skin as gnarled as branches, and a beard like moss; it was squat and short, stumpy-legged and short-armed, and resembled nothing so much as a boulder with a very large and protuberant nose. The glimmer that the lantern-light had caught on was its eyes, depthless and unreadable, shadowed beneath brows heavy as rock.

"Ghân-buri-Ghân has heeded call of horse-master," it said, in a slow and grumbling voice like the falling of distant stones. "What be its will?"

--------------

We took the strange little thing back to camp, as much as it could be said that we could lead it anywhere in its forest; for rather we told it where we wished to meet it, and then it scrambled off into the bracken with barely a trodden weed to mark its passing. Théoden and I blundered with considerably less grace back to the campsite, and met it at a circle just beyond the general bivouac of the men, and lit a fire there. It licked up in welcoming golden tongues, and I sat down and opened a canteen of strong drink and offered it to the Wild Man.

He sniffed at it, and his lumpy pale tongue came out as if to taste the essence it breathed into the air, and he wrinkled his nose and spat a thick glob of phlegm in the dirt at my foot. "Pah!" he said. "Ghân will not drink cordial of horse-master. It make dark-eye, and cloud see, and muddle hand. Water Ghân will drink, if horse-master will give it."

I put aside the first canteen, feeling absurdly slighted, for it was the best mead in Rohan and half my éored would have given an arm, or both, to sip from it. I had thought to honor him, but the Woses were very unlike Men for all that they bore the same name in principle. But I fetched instead one of our precious skins of spring-water, and Ghân-buri-Ghân drank deeply, his furred throat moving until every drop was gone. He wiped his straggling beard and broad-lipped mouth with a thick-fingered hand, and asked again, "What is will of horse-men who wake Ghân from deep sleeping?"

--------------

We told him then, and asked for his aid in guiding our army through his forest, and he gazed at us with eyes as unreadable and intractable as a deep well. Occasionally he would mutter something to himself in his own tongue, a grinding and considering language quite alien to anything I was used to. I felt uncertain as to who was a Man here, as if the Woses had been that first, something true and raw and elemental, and then the Men of Rohan and Gondor had become something softer and weaker, needing houses to survive the cruel world. But I would have promised anything I had if it meant reaching Minas Tirith in time.

About this time I became conscious that someone was watching us, but when I glanced back into the woods, I saw nothing there. It was not an enemy, so I gave it no more thought, but yet I wondered who might be creeping from the warmth of bedroll and dream to spy upon the counsels of Théoden and myself. Ghân was still watching us with sullen skepticism, and I did not want him to feel uneasy, lest he suddenly retract anything he may – or may not have – promised, and vanish forever into the depths of Druadan.

He laid his terms, and then I turned to Théoden and switched to Rohirric, our native tongue, for even I grew weary of Westron and were it in truth something in the woods with a mind to do ill, then the Orcs spoke no Rohirric and would not understand. Théoden and I discussed what could be done, and at last brought the terms renewed to Ghân, and somehow, impossibly, the First Men and the Second came to agreement.

I was heartened by this, but also greatly disheartened. For if the West-road had not been held against us then we need not have come to Druadan at all, and perhaps we could have come to Gondor already. But even then there was no chance of coming to the city that day, and our outriders had reported that the White City was in flames, surrounded by the enemy and hopelessly besieged, running short of defenders and hope. Try as we might, and for every path that we found, it meant that the sand was slipping ever lower in the hourglass that marked the time Gondor could hold out without us.

--------------

The veiling murk of the enemy served us in good stead the next day, and although we turned away from the comforting sight of Anórien and the knowledge of where we were, we had the Woses, Ghân's people, to guide us. Each éored-leader had a Wild Man at his side to show him the changing emerald-green pathways through the wood, and often the whole company was forced to dismount and walk in file through the narrow veins that fell down through the forest and into the Stonewain Valley.

Here we halted, and Ghân took his leave of us, for his purpose had been served and again I promised to give him anything he should desire, should he come to Edoras and ask for his tithe. The strange stumpy Man answered that all he wanted was for the Orcs to stay clear of Druadan, and for us to kill them would satisfy his heart. I promised that on that front we should need no encouragement, and then he gathered his Woses to him and slipped away into the dusk, gone in a twinkling and never to be seen by any man of Rohan again.

Away in the east we could hear now the rhythm of war-drums, and faintly the ground shook beneath our feet. The latest round of scouts returned, and bore worse tidings than before; they had found two dead men, cut down with their horses, and among them was Hirgon who had come to warn us, the Red Arrow still clutched in his hand.

So Denethor would have heard no word of us, and might now even begin to despair greatly of our coming. The strain would have cracked lesser men than the Steward of Gondor, and I wondered now if he thought we had abandoned him, forsworn our Oath and decided instead to mind our own borders. But of course it was not so, for we came onwards as quickly as we might, but at each outpost we had found the circumstances to conspire against us.

We were close enough to Gondor now that I would not allow rest for the night, and Théoden agreed to the wisdom of it. I would have felt pretentious and overreaching elsewise, and still did to some degree, but Théoden smiled gently at me and said, "You must decide these things now, my son! For soon you shall be king after me, and must not look to an old man for assent!"

I allotted only a brief stop to refill canteens and to let the horses breathe, and then we mounted up again and slipped down the valley toward the Rammas Echor, the great wall that ringed the mighty battle raging on Pelennor. As silent ghosts we came, the twins, perhaps, of the ones that Aragorn might have bent to his service. Still I would not permit myself to think openly of it, and yet it came oftenest to my thought. There was no time still to think of old friends and losses, for the wounds must not open afresh.

Downwards we came, and arrived at the breach in the Rammas that the Enemy had torn open; a great ruin, and a sad one, and chunks of stone lay blown to pieces, perhaps with the same devilry that had opened the wound in the Deeping Wall. But we went swift and silent, and then we drew up before it. Théoden came first of course, and he drew rein and gazed down on the flames sawing through the heavy night-blackness. Then he lifted his head, and said, "So we have come to it, my Riders. Long have I led you from home, to fight in strange lands, and now I trust you shall repay me for all the trust I have placed in you."

There was a rippling, but hushed, murmur of assent.

Théoden turned, wheeling in the stirrups to face us. "Éomer, my son," he said to me, "you shall lead the first éored, and it shall follow my banner down the center. Elfhelm, you shall go to the right, and Grimbold to the left, and if all goes well we shall meet below on the field. Strike down the enemy wherever you see them, for no longer shall we go in trickery and subterfuge. We have come now, and will do as we must. Forth Eorlingas, and fear no darkness!"

--------------

We went through in a great rolling thunder of hooves and the beating, drumlike sound of spear upon shield, and we became dark ghosts, for still the enemy's shadow had not lifted. There were some Orcs roaming far on the fringes, and while they had arms, they were few and taken completely off their guard, and we cut them down with ease. We gathered and waited, and re-formed the éoreds, and then we paused there to wait, and to gaze upon the state of affairs as they lay below.

In the distance we could see Minas Tirith, and great reaping circles of flame lay in halos about the White City, eating the ground and charring the stone. Faintly to our ears came the rumble of siege-engines and the far-off clash of orc and man. Some of the horses shifted nervously, and were calmed by their riders.

I found myself thinking of Hrothar, now scant hours – or minutes – from his first battle, and of his friend Dernhelm. I wondered if they would find fighting to their taste. I loosened Gúthwinë in the sheath, and glanced to Théoden. For the first time since emerging from beneath the spell, he looked old and hunched, a bent ancient man huddled in the saddle where he could no longer ride and perhaps should leave matters to younger men. It frightened me, and I put my heels to Firefoot's sides and spurred up alongside him.

"My lord?" I asked in an undertone. "What are our orders?"

Théoden stared as if transfixed, then shook his head and gave me a small, pained smile. "Spare an old man a moment, my son," he said, "and think none the worse of me for this weakness. I see again here that even the greatest city of men must fall, that all heroes must taste mortality, and it is a bitter cup to drink."

I nodded and fell back, and watched his dark figure remain motionless astride Snowmane. I have no idea, still, how long we tarried there, when we should have been pressing onwards. But then from the distance came a crack like thunder, and a bright white flash like lightning came with it, and the air shivered with it, and it left sizzling residues of itself crackling through the hair of the men. As if he had been waiting for this precise signal, Théoden sprang upright in the saddle.

He spurred forward and raised a clenched fist, and the éoreds had been waiting for his mark and began to roll forward in a great inexorable wave. And above them all the voice of Théoden ran wild on the wind, and his words rolled like an avalanche down the plain in herald of our coming.

"Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!" he screamed, and the Rohirrim responded with a mighty roar. "Fell deeds awake; fire and slaughter! Spear shall be shaken! Shield shall be splintered! A sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now! Ride! Ride to Gondor!"

He seized a horn from his banner-bearer, and vented his lungs into one mighty blast, and although that horn had seen many battles and many blowing, it could not withstand it, and the ancient bone split in two and fell useless to the ground beneath Snowmane's hooves. Upon the perimeter of the Pelennor men looked up in sudden hope, and hearts began to quicken, and a light seemed to well in the heart of shadow.

As the first horn winded so did every other, and the sound was fierce and wild and joyful and terrible, a thunderous song screaming in savage delight upon the plain, rolling like thunder to the stricken orc-hosts below. Théoden drew Herugrim his sword, and the hissing sound of five thousand others echoed across the plain, a sweet and deadly medley. And then Snowmane sprang away at a shout from his rider, and then the fury of the wave was unloosed, and the might of Rohan came down like a hammer upon the Orcs below.

Swift we came, and deadly, and the éoreds came thundering down the hill like a breaking wave. But although we rode like lightning, we could not reach Théoden, who plunged forward like something possessed, sensing his last hour and last glory, and tears streamed down my cheeks as I rode, borne from the wind and the emotion and the pure fey madness of the moment. I raised my spear, and the first line of Rohirrim plunged madly into the enemy, and they wailed and crumbled beneath our hooves. There could be no resistance, no hope, and even as the breath was punched from my lungs with my speed, it came out in a thrilling and screaming cry.

And then the darkness about us broke, and the grass ignited into fire with the slant of the rising sun, and countless hooves churned it to a great and ravenous flame. The cry became a song, and steel clashed and crashed and sobbed and sang, and our enemy quailed beneath us. It was lunacy and supremacy and magnificence, and all and none at once, and before us Théoden came as the image of a king of old, and wherever he rode the banners of the Enemy fell into ruin beneath him.

Our song was wordless and furious and fair and terrible, and it thundered like the breaking of the world upon the Pelennor. In our hour we rode and were untouchable, and unbreakable. I sobbed so hard that I laughed, and I sang and slaughtered and tears rolled down my cheeks, and my sword rose to bite the darkness away, and we trailed the sun on our hooves and at last the shadow fell before us, and in its wake we left only chaos, and churned orc-bodies, and the Pelennor echoed for all ages of the world with the sound of the greatest fight in all of the lore of the Riddermark.


	10. Éowyn – Of Kings Fair and Foul

CHAPTER TEN

Éowyn – Of Kings Fair and Foul

Battle. There was no way to describe it, no way to make sense of what flowed and broke around me, the shouts, the clamor, the scrape and screech of steel, of sword against lance and bow, of Riders taken clean through with a spear and fallen screaming into the trampling morass of bodies. Blood caked steel, and horses were run through with a thousand arrows, and the grass was churned to muddy furor beneath the rampaging hooves. I barely kept my seat as an orc-arrow sliced straight overhead, and grasped at Windfola's reins to steady us. My arms clamped tight around Meriadoc, and he drew his own sword as we went.

It was chaos, and not the sweet, paralyzing darkness that I had expected. I had thought to go willingly into the battle, and to kill as many as I could before succumbing – I had even thought whether I would prefer to be taken by sword, spear, or arrow. But it was not like that at all. I could not take my attention away from a moment – I could not stop to think, I could only react. I could not think about whether I was in the right, or if I would die later; all conscious thought had been burned from me. I was totally embroiled, lost in the darkness and mess and filth of battle. It was what I had desired, and I was carried away on a churning, roiling cloud of it. I loved it, and hated it, and found that I could not let myself be there too fully, or else I would go mad. Part of me seemed to crawl away into a small room, and bar the door, and watch through my eyes as if it was not happening to me at all.

It bore no resemblance whatsoever to my fight against the knight and the quintain. Ludicrously, they kept spinning about in my head, the knight with his sad painted eyes, and the deep gashes my spear had left in the padded crossbeam. My sword went up, and came down, and the fullers welled in deep black blood where the blade had sunk deeply through the armor of an orc-archer, whose gauntleted fingers still held a crooked arrow to a horn bow. He seemed to be frozen in surprise, and then I used my boot to push him off my sword and lifted it again to meet the next blow.

Windfola was galloping at full tilt across the Pelennor, and I clung to the reins with one fist, slashing and chopping at anything that sought to hinder me. Merry hung to Windfola's thick grey mane with one hand, and with the other he swung with undimmed vigor at all the black, crack-nailed fingers that crawled up like possessed spiders over the horse's neck. One orc thought to go for the easier, or at least smaller, target, and his eyes crossed in permanent shock as Merry's small dagger rammed through his forehead.

Ahead me and around me, the éoreds spread out in continually churning waves, and here and there the battle went well, and in others it went ill, and I had lost sight of Éomer and Théoden and they had become only as ghosts, faint and vaguely remembered, to my thought. At times I could hear my uncle's voice rising in thunderous command through the scattered host, and then it would fade again. I had no idea if either of them lived or died and I was too far gone to care much. The Rohirrim ran wild and unchecked among the siege-engines, hacking, slashing, slaying, and I came with the best of them, and Orcs howled and toppled beneath the onslaught of bright steel.

Yet for all our madness, and how we drove the enemy to the river to drown them like dogs, we had not overthrown the siege, or won the battered Gate, and in split-second glimpses inside the White City, I saw Orcs crawling here and there, renewed desperation galvanizing them to action, and trebuchets mounted on the walls began to spit oil-soaked, flaming brands down at us, as the enemy commandeered the city's weakening defenses and did their best to overthrow us. Yet we were too numerous, and although horses and Riders alike fell beneath the flames, we continued our assault undaunted.

Suddenly I wrenched viciously sidewise, and nearly lost my seat, and clutched at the pommel to keep myself astride. A giant Uruk had me by the leg, and his snarl bared yellowed fangs in my face. I brought my sword to bear on him, but I was not fast enough, he was going to hew me, and I would be brought down and trampled, my last moments a riot of flashing hooves and flaring steel, and all I had to do in order to die was to let go of my grip on the saddle. It seemed so preposterously simple. I almost laughed. I had thought so long of how to do it, and now it was here before me, and I could not loosen my hand.

I do not like to think if I might have done it, if I could only have unlocked my fingers. The world seemed to spin to a blurry halt, and I gazed into the eyes of the Uruk, and he looked into mine, and somehow we must have known something of the madness of the other. He was raising his blade to rend flesh from bone, but it was going slowly, so slowly, and my hand had been locked to the saddle-pommel. Then the Uruk's lips curled in a snarl, but it was not of anger; rather of pain. For Merry's dagger came across in a quick arching sweep and cut deeply into the mottled black flesh. Parted from its owner, the arm dropped to the ground, and the Uruk, clutching at the wound, fell backwards, blood oozing through his rough leather glove.

I heard shouting then, and cut down an orc as Windfola trampled another one, and turned back to see a great advancing host coming forward to meet us. Their war-horns were harsh and brazen, and above them flew a snarling standard, sable-black, with a coiling red worm. They rode with long spears, a mockery of our own, and then at last I caught a glimpse of my uncle. Snowmane reared, and my uncle called for the charge, and bolted forward to meet the enemy head-on, gone beyond fear of loss or death.

Forward through the press drove Théoden, and the swords of the enemies seemed to slide and fall off him, and for a moment I caught a glimpse of Éomer's white crest flowing in the breeze beside him. I urged Windfola onwards, and joined the clash, and then heard a splintering crack. Théoden's sword broke the spear on which the banner of the enemy was borne; he hewed the rider and the carcass went down, floundering horribly. Freed of its burden, the quarrelsome black warhorse reared and whinnied wildly, its reins flying, steel fittings flaring like fire in the cresting dawn, and then a sword that I vaguely recalled as belonging to Elfhelm slashed it and sent it down to join its rider's corpse in the blood-roiled dust.

The battle raged; I had no words. Nothing. I retreated into my skull, behind my walls, and I have no idea what my body did without my knowledge, while I rode open-eyed and saw nothing, and did not think, and only reacted. I might have remembered, but what my memory turned to had nothing to do with the moment.

--------------

I had been certain that Elfhelm had known me, although I had done my best to lower my voice and speak in the tones of a young man when he had asked my name, and although his brow furrowed upon recalling no "Dernhelm" numbered among his legions, he had let me join his éored. Surely at least the presence of Merry on the saddle before me had given him knowledge that I was no common soldier. I do not know what tale he put about to his men, but all of them ignored Merry and pretended not to notice should he speak. Perhaps Elfhelm knew both of us, and our purposes for riding, but he had not said a word to Théoden, and for that I thanked him.

The Riders who were bedded down next to me must have known, to some degree, that "Dernhelm" was no ordinary cavalry-rider, for I did not wash with the rest of the men and stole away into the woods to piss and did not speak unless directly addressed, and even then very little. And also there was Merry, who to them seemed not to exist. If I had seen Éomer or Théoden in the distance, I had quickly made myself scarce, and worked as hard as the other men, and if they had wondered why I never took off my helmet, then at least they did not carry their talk where others might hear.

Some had made a tentative effort to befriend me, especially the younger soldiers who were uncertain about what to find in a true battle, but I shunned their company and their offers of ale and bawdy stories to lift hearts weighted with doubt and the creeping smoke of Mordor that followed us like a cur at its master's heels. At times I had wanted to come to them, if only to break my loneliness, and then reminded myself that there was no purpose to it, for I had come solely to die, and to cut off my blooms and isolate myself completely in a cocoon of ice was to ease the passing. I wanted no clinging thread to stop me, no half-remembered skein of loyalty to pull me back.

But I steadfastly kept to myself, and did not even allow Meriadoc to know in whose company he rode, for out of some concern for my safety he might have borne my tale to Théoden and ruined me. So I rode closer to Gondor, and to death, with every day that passed, and until now, I had not thought that I should have difficulty in finding it.

--------------

"To me! Riders, to me!" I heard my uncle's voice rising above the clash of steel, and I scarcely needed to set my heels to Windfola's sides; the horses of Rohan knew their duty well enough and the stallion was already leaping to Théoden's aid. I turned with the horse toward him, and did not even care that Éomer was almost directly beside me, Firefoot tossing his head and whinnying wildly, his rider wielding a sword with one hand and a long lance with the other, casting about in a fury. But then the tide of battle drove us apart, and I came to my uncle's side, answering his call, just as the sky went dark above us.

For a moment I thought that the fume of Mordor had closed about us again, that the darkness we had lifted had returned, and glanced up to see a sieve of light burning through the pitted clouds, which lay mounded on the high arc of the sky. But the next moment it was quenched, and a terrible scream assailed my ears. Death swept down from the heavens on a black-winged terror, and astride it was a great towering shadow helmed with an iron crown, and its gauntleted hands clutched a naked sword and a heavy mace, and Snowmane reared and screamed in fear.

I thought I saw my uncle reach down to soothe his fractious mount, but it was too late; it had been from the moment that the darkness returned. Everything must have happened very quickly, but for me it seemed to go very slowly. A black arrow took Snowmane clean through, and his rear turned into a stumble, and then he fell, screaming. The armored figure of Théoden fell from the saddle and slammed into the hoof-torn ground, and then Snowmane plunged down atop him.

I screamed, or perhaps I wept, or perhaps the bright shock of blood on Théoden's breastplate was too surreal for me to accept and I thought that I walked in a waking nightmare. My womanly scream was lost in the clash of battle and even had someone heard it and thought it odd that a Rohirrim warrior screamed in such a high voice, it was undoubtedly driven from their head the next second by the need to stay alive. All I could see was the body of my liege lord, my king, my uncle, my father, lying on his back in the mud with blood on his face and armor, crushed and twisted beneath the writhing carcass of Snowmane. If I wept, and I did, I trust that you shall forgive it. But even as the tears dried salty on my face, I was already running. The beast had killed my kin, and now it had become personal between us.

I do not know how I got off Windfola's back, but I must have. I seem to recall that he threw us, me and Merry both, caught in the throes of equine terror, for even the most steadfast horses of the Mark fell into a blind fright at the coming of the deepest darkness. The world tilted and I went hard to the ground, and he plunged away forgotten into the chaos of the battle, to live or to be cut down, to trample or be trampled, and I did not care very much. I saw that Merry was with me, or had been, and such was the effect of his small size that the fall had gone worse for him than for me.

I had no eyes for anyone but Théoden, and chopped and hacked madly through the fray of foes toward him, and then noted vaguely that Merry crawled on all fours after me, easy prey for any vagrant Orc or Uruk that saw the Halfling making slow and desperate progress along the bloody ground. A quick spear-thrust would end him; that or the rearing of a maddened horse, or the swing of a sword, or anything at all. It seemed insanely dangerous, and I tried to call to him to go back, but my voice had locked in my throat, and I had no words or time, and then I reached Théoden.

He saw me, or might have, and his bloody, dark eyes seemed to move as if to glance over my face. I could not tell if he knew me; his flesh had gone a pale blue-white and there was little life in him, yet he was not dead, and it would go worse for him because of it. His chest moved only with a great effort, and Snowmane had gone stiff, released from his terror by death. Before them crouched an immense shadow mounted on the wings of night.

The beast was hideous – a craning armor-scaled neck, a chomping and slavering mouth filled with sharp teeth and girdled with a heavy bit, and its stretched skin wings were pinioned with fanged fingers of bone. It emitted a terrible reek, and its mad eyes rolled and flared, and its black claws tore furrows from the earth.

And yet for all its hideousness, its rider was worse. There was no open ugliness about it; in fact there was very little to see of it at all. It was man-height, but larger, and its robes swirled about it in a gauzy black maelstrom, swooping out like the wings of its mount. Its sword was of ancient and evil make, and its faceless head was crowned with a dark, cruel helm, and its iron-gloved hand clutched a huge morningstar.

I was afraid; I was terribly afraid, and my heart lay raw and open in my chest, all its secrets and fears laid bare to the _thing _ hungrily slurping them from my blood. A great coldness came over me, and yet I stood there before the crumpled carcasses of Snowmane and Théoden, between them and the ravenous shadow, and said, "Be gone, lord of carrion! Will you not leave the dead in peace?"

The empty hood turned toward me, and it had no face nor mouth, nothing save the terrible glimmer of eyes deep in unfathomable darkness. Yet somehow it contrived to speak, and its words were like freezing swords plunged into me. I thought it was Sauron himself, the very manifestation of evil, until I heard it speak, and what it was instead was scarcely better. "Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey!" it snarled at me. "For if you do so, then I shall not slay you afterward – your fate shall be worse. I shall bear you away to the houses of lamentation, where no sunlight or sweet thought may come, and your flesh shall be devoured as your mind is left withered and bare to the Lidless Eye."

I put my hand to my side. They were nerveless in their gloves, and my sword still hung there, sheathed – had I put it there after I fell? Or had it found its way into the scabbard on its own? It had been drawn already, and used often; orc-blood was crystallizing black on the blade, but nothing, _nothing, _could match the blackness of the towering demon before me. But somehow my hand closed, and the sword came free, and I said, "Whatever you do, I shall hinder it, if I can."

It laughed then, and that was worse than its speech, a terrible shattering, cracking snarl like the cut of a whip, and it was all I could do not to flinch and grovel before it, but somehow I still stood straight. "Hinder me?" it said, and laughed again. "Young fool – no man can hinder me."

And then it was my turn to feel the fey, wild merriment, and it meant little since what I would say would change nothing, and yet I laughed as if I had gone mad, and I finally had, in truth. For I proposed to fight the greatest of the Nine, the Lord of the Black Riders, the Witch-King of Angmar and the right arm of Sauron, a Ringwraith of ancient and unbearable power, and yet still I laughed. It could not be that simple, surely, and I would die, but at last there was no reason for me to stay alive – I would avenge Théoden's death and go happily to my own grave.

Still laughing, I raised my sword. "But I am no man," I answered it. "I am a woman, Éowyn Éomund's daughter, and if you are not deathless, begone! You stand between me and my lord and kin, and if you touch him, no matter what dark sorcery you may command, then I shall smite you."

The winged beast snarled at me, lashing me with ropes of vile spittle, but the Ringwraith hunched atop its back was silent a moment, as if in doubt, and I looked into those inhuman eyes and knew my death had come at last to claim me. I found no fear in my heart, only a fury and a willingness, for I perhaps could slay him, but in doing so would fall along with him. I drew what I thought would be one of my final breaths, and readied for the assault.

It fell with the suddenness of a lightning-strike. The beast gathered its wings, and arched its gruesomely long, sinuous neck, and then crashed upon me, shrieking, tearing and rending with beak and claw, and I felt it rip a deep gash in my armor as I leapt aside. The darkness was all about me, tearing me and coiling up arms and legs, forcing its way down my throat and chilling my heart to stone and ice, and yet I did not flinch, or fall. I swung my sword, and the strike went clean and hard, and the head of the monster crashed to the earth at my feet, spewing noxious ichor. As the beast fell so did the darkness it had brought, and the sunlight fell like molten gold around me, and shone in my hair like a crown.

But from the ruin of its mount rose the Black Rider, and it turned toward me, and its eyes flamed with hatred. Its sword and mace both it still clutched, and it shrieked in defiance, burning my ears like poison. I braced for the blow but there was no way to avoid it. The mace crashed down upon my shield, and the wood exploded useless, and pain that had never been equaled in my life shot through my arm. I staggered and fell, landing heavily against Snowmane, my eyes dazed, seeing nothing but light and shadow, and greatest of all the lethal one looming tall above me.

I gazed up at him, and he swung back his mace for the killing blow, and wondered ludicrously if it should hurt, or if the sheer power of the stroke should send my body into pieces before I felt it. Éomer, if he survived, would find me later, with Théoden, and at one stroke he should lose both sister and uncle, an uncle who would be as a father to him. I pitied him, and wished him well – he the last heir of Eorl – and then that was the final emotion I felt, and I readied to die. There was no possible means to get away. The shadow of the rising mace blocked out the sun.

And then – a miracle. The Black Captain lurched suddenly, off-balance, and the mace fell but tore only a wound from the mud, and not from my flesh. He gave a cry, but of pain not hatred, and nothing made sense any more. The world was fracturing into ragged, glimmering pieces, and none of them would resolve into one. There was a voice, which impossibly sounded like Merry's, crying, "Éowyn! Éowyn!"

So he knew me then; my secrecy had gone from me, and I stood as a woman uncloaked on a field of men living and dying and undead. The Ringwraith was on his mighty knees before me, and I had no strength left, but somehow I came to my feet, and sank my sword into the space between crown and hood, and twisted, and twisted again, and a coldness that dripped icicles into my heart flowed out from the darkness and into me. I fell, the sword-hilt clutched in my hand, and the Ringwraith's helm and hauberk began to disintegrate.

My sword broke, sparking, into pieces, as I cleaved unseen sinew, and perhaps the ghost of a long-fled face. The black iron crown rolled away across the ground. I had become an ice statue, and my bones and muscles would not bend or move. I saw, far away, a thunderous dark wave rolling to engulf me. It smelled of darkness and sorrow and long laments, and if a miracle had saved me from the Ringwraith's clutches, there was no saving me from this one. I fell, and fell, and breathed dust and despair, and then I drowned in it, and knew myself to be dying at last.

The world split into halves. The cage reached out to clasp me. I was afraid; I could not let myself be caught and prisoned again. I rose to the heavens, and drifted among them in great iridescent clouds of starburst and nebulae, and time passed, or did not move at all, as slowly as a measured drip from a rain-soaked roof. I did not know how long I lingered there in the twilight that came as consciousness fled, and the half-thought came to my mind to find Aragorn there, and to run with him on the high celestial vaults of the world, for I must be dead, and I was happy.

I flew there among my heavens for what seemed to be an eternity, heedless of the battle below, even if there was a battle at all. I did not find Aragorn, but I seemed to see his face in the colluding, blazing, sun-seared bands of cloud. The light from them grew fainter and fainter, and the cold grew stronger and more ravenous, and at the same time I was dwindling farther and farther into a cold lump, pulling away and falling down in an endless spiral.

There was a figure striding toward me, tall, or perhaps short, young or old, ageless and faceless, and neither good nor ill. I could not make sense of it. It could have been Merry, or Aragorn, or Elfhelm, or Éomer, or even my father Éomund, come to carry his daughter home with him to the land of the lost. I knew nothing any longer; for the eyes of my body were blind, and I knew I had no pulse or breath, no hint of life, for at last it had drained from me. I turned my head upright, and watched the figure come to me in my mind, and whispered, "Father?"

The figure, if my father it was, did not answer me. Instead I heard voices, far-off and terrible, and they whispered of sorrows and wraiths, and told me that Éomer was slain and all hope was gone. All the while the figure stood by me. About its head there wreathed a pale flame, and its eyes grew brighter and brighter and seared through me, and I knew that I saw nothing truly but only fevered phantoms. I was dead, or soon to be. The heat and light went, and blackness came stealing like a thief in its wake, and then the darkness came like the spreading wings of the Lord of the Nazgûl's fell beast, and it covered me.


	11. Éomer – Of Kings Old and New

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Éomer – Of Kings Old and New

Battle. I was in my element, and blood ran from me and through me and around me, falling in great staining waterfalls, and it pounded in my head and lent me a feverish clarity, something borne from experience and madness alike that beat like a hammer upon the smoking anvil of my heart. I fought and laughed and sobbed and sang, and then a hardness like stone came over me, and there was no emotion in my face or eyes even as I overturned the enemy into the mud at my feet. For this was what I knew, and the phantom promise of victory and glory coiled me onwards like a rope, and I cut and slashed through the clamoring hordes.

The battle went onwards, and it began to go badly. For we had beaten off the worst of the Gate's foes, and I hoped that the soldiers within had enough timber to reinforce it, but the enemy had taken enough notice of their plight to call for more troops. Thundering hoofbeats shook the earth, and yet these did not come from the Rohirrim and their horses but rather the Haradrim, the foul, Sauron-serving men. They rode to war on giant beasts, huge tusked _mûmakil_ with vans built on their back, and they hurled arrows and spears from their lofty perch into the riders below. Bone split and blood flowed, and I lived still, and I laughed.

I called the charge in my uncle's stead, for I had lost him in the madness of the fight and could only pray that it went well for him. Some of the horses reared and skittered and would not go near the roaring advance of the mûmaks, who came onwards with terrible speed. Their tusks raked the ground and slashed horse and rider off their feet, and at their passing dust billowed up in earthborn clouds that churned and stewed like a huge and engulfing storm.

From the besieged Gate there rode Gondorians to join our van and bring us what succor they might, and they drove like a spearhead through the gathering flocks of foes. But then something caught my eye, and I wheeled about to see, slashing an Uruk across the throat as I did. Nearby there lay the crumpled carcass of one of the black winged beasts that the Ringwraiths rode, and before it the pale white form of Snowmane.

My heart lurched and overturned in terror. The ground was a stew of blood and mud, and grass beaten down, and in it barely to be seen was the armored form of a man, but no common man – it was Théoden son of Thengel, Lord of the Mark, King of Rohan, and Master of Horses, and he lay fading as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. In truth it shone out terrible and savage, so bright as to blind, or perhaps that was the rime of tears welling in my eyes.

I called for my men, and the few of the éored who still lived and could control their wild horses fell into regiment at my back. We rode there in desperate haste, and I dismounted, springing from the saddle before Firefoot had even come to a halt. I ran to him, and impossibly, he lived, but had I called for the physicians even then, as if he could be borne to them through the madness, there was no saving him. His armor was crushed, black gashes scored through the plate, and his eyes saw only the great starred vault that opened above him to receive him.

But as I stood there before him, and called his name in a terrible grief, his eyes moved a bit, and seemed to train in on me. He smiled, and it was both dreadfully sad and well pleased, and he made a feeble motion with his hand. The banner of Rohan, the White Horse on Green, was taken from the clutching grasp of its dead bearer, and he turned his head weakly to indicate it should be given to me. I took it by reflex, my dirty glove closing about the tall lance as the embroidered horse capered madly on the wind.

Théoden, king and uncle and father, smiled at me. "Hail, King of the Mark," he said to me, his words so faint that the wind snatched them from his lips and gave them only grudgingly to my ears. "Long may you reign – and bid Éowyn farewell – " His blood-crusted mouth moved as if to say more, but then the waning spark in his eyes was snuffed, and only a candle went out in them, but a great flame left the world. Around me the men of the éored bent their heads, weeping.

I took a breath, and my chest heaved, and I knew that I was a king now, Rohan's king, and must comfort them, rally them again to the battle which was not yet done, even if the death of the beast and its Rider had cleared a small circle around us where we stood briefly untroubled. "Do not weep," I said to them, "battle calls us, and later the – the king shall be mourned." But my own eyes betrayed me, and I began to sob, and tears spilled down my cheeks beneath the cold silver of my helmet. For the world had lost more than a man; it had lost a king and one of its greatest champions.

"Let his men remain here," I managed at last, fighting the words through my ragged throat, "and c-carry him from the field." I did not want despoilment or ravage to come to his corpse, even as he lay there beneath the sky, and still I could think that he might wake and sit up, were it not for all the blood pooled about him.

There was a great ruin of slaughter about us, and many men of the éoreds lay cut down. I stared at them one by one, and knew that the battle would go ill soon and that the king – Théoden, _no, _me – was needed to rally exhausted hearts onwards. But I could not bring myself to leave my uncle just yet, and many good and faithful men that I had known had met their end here.

I stepped slowly among the corpses, and while I mourned them, there was no loss as great to my heart as was Théoden's. I had just thought that I must go, and win the battle or die in the effort, when I saw something odd.

Sprawled near the king on his face lay a young warrior, smaller than some and thinner than most, and a great tangled mane of pale-gold hair lay on his back, and on the scarred ground about him, like an autumn mantle. His hand clutched the hilt of a broken sword, and he lay so still that I thought he too must be counted among the numerous dead.

I took a step toward him, intending to turn him over, and to know his face and bear the sad tidings to his mother if we should ever return to Edoras. But then I took another step, and a terrible knowledge suddenly pierced through me. For I was wrong, utterly wrong. I had thought that it was safe. I had thought that she stayed behind. And I stood there and felt my world break into crystalline shards about me, and knew the magnitude of my mistake, and the depths of my despair, and every victory I might have won later fell into dark and tasteless ashes, a cup as deep as death and as unbearable to swallow.

_For the –_

_fallen – _

_warrior –_

_was –_

_Éowyn._

--------------

I froze there, caught as if in the middle of a cry by an arrow through the heart, and then I stumbled towards her. I was mistaken, I had to be, and yet I was not. I reached her in a second, and turned her, and her face was empty and frozen, her eyes closed, her expression serene. A terrible howl of grief came out of my throat, something that I did not recognize, something which tore every inch of me apart on its passing and spat tattered pieces in its wake.

I could not speak. There were hands on my shoulders, aghast voices, and tears falling thickly as the men of the éored clustered about to absorb the terrible realization. I lifted her into my arms, and cradled her head against my shoulder, and still said not a word, because they had all fled from me, leaving only snarling, tearing, engulfing agony behind. How had I not known? How had I thought her safe at Edoras? How, and when, had she found the death she desired, and why had I not known? I had known _nothing! _I was _blind!_

"Éowyn!" I cried. "Éowyn! How did you come here?"

I would have sobbed, but the loss was beyond that. I held her, and thought never to let her go, and to die with her beside our uncle, and then my arms opened as if springing the jaws of a trap, and she was on the ground and I was on my feet again. The captains tried to hold me back, to counsel me, to tell me what to do, but I would not listen to them. I was orphaned at last, fatherless and sisterless, a king with no hope, no kin, and only mad black mirth to soothe his grief-sick heart. I turned away, and went back to Firefoot, and my grief flash-froze and alchemized into unbearable fury.

They were urging me to stay, to see my uncle's body to the city. I did not listen. I mustered the van about me, and climbed astride, and I screamed, "_Death_!" The Rohirrim answered me with one ringing, stunning voice that broke across the plains like thunder, and if Éowyn had sought it, then I did as well, and I would ride and kill until they caught me and cut me down, and I had no plan and no strategy and charged blindly and heedlessly into the chaos.

--------------

Of this I remember nothing, save for broken, shattered pieces of images that will not coalesce into reliable memory. I can tell you little. I killed like a thing possessed, and "Death!" I called and "DEATH!" answered me, like the echo of a great mountain. The Rohirrim gathered up the fringes of battle, and passed in a thundering storm away toward the renewed battle, and for the first time I understood what Éowyn must have felt, the desperate longing to ride and to fight and to go willingly into the cold embrace of death at the end.

My fury burned out of me like a white-hot heart. My horsetail helm flowed on the wind, and where I passed men rallied behind me, and screamed, "Éomer King! Éomer King!" Hooves rang like hammers and I was blind with rage and pain. I cut and cut and cut and should one of my own men have accidentally found their way into the sweeping arc of my sword, I shudder to think what I might have done to them, unknowing. The sound of fighting beat like a great heart, and dust and darkness filled the air.

My mad, blind attack betrayed me, as you think it might. For the first wave of my charge was unstoppable, and laid the foe to ruin, and at first we seemed to have won an improbable victory. But the horses would not go near the snarling, swerving mûmaks, and there the men of the enemy rallied, and the enemy awaiting the call to sack and rape Gondor came instead to them. There were Southrons, and Easterlings, and Variags and Haradrim, and their banners massed among their foot-soldiers like blowing swaths of blood.

Their attack cut me off from the flank, and I was impossibly outnumbered in a sea of foes, and laughed still, for soon I would die, and go to be with Father, Mother, Théoden, Théodred, and Éowyn. All my kin had gone and left me to walk a cold earth alone, and I was weary of it; I was the last of my line and I cared not for my life. I wanted to die then, in the blackest, deepest madness, and saw the overwhelming advance of the foe, and laughed in maniac defiance.

But from the Gate there came a new force to aid me, and men of Gondor came to my side, and at last we began to turn the tide against them. But still we were pressed mightily, and I was driven back toward the river, for I fought without strategy and my enemy had used it. But then I heard a shout, and looked to the broad river-sweep, and felt my last shoot of hope wither and die in my heart.

"The Corsairs!" men shouted. "The Corsairs of Umbar are coming! The battle is over! We are doomed! The _Corsairs _come!"

My mind became stern then, and clearer, and I knew what my end was to be. It was to be utter ruin, and the end of my house, for I the last heir of it would fall here. We were overcome. There was no fighting it. The Corsairs held the vast reserves of the enemy, and now they sailed swiftly up the river under a fleet of black sails. The Rohirrim were brave and valiant, but ragged and decimated, and here, under this last assault, we would fall.

I was the last King of the Mark, then; the line would be overthrown, and our bodies trampled into the mud, and later, if ever the shadow of Sauron fell back from the land, they would make stories of our end here. I rode quickly to a hill where the enemy could see me, and set my banner there, twisting the butt-end of the spear into the earth, and stood beneath the snapping cloth. The White Horse pranced in its last defiance.

"To hope's end I rode," I said, and the wind swirled about me and blew my words on it to the advancing host, "and to heart's breaking." That was true, terribly so, for even now within me it bled and withered to nothingness. I spoke clearly and strongly, and laughed as I did. But what I had lost, the enemy would lose in turn. I would not go to Éowyn and tell her that I had fallen in weakness; I would drag whole hordes of the beasts to the darkness with me. And so I laughed again. "_Now for wrath_," I said, "_now for ruin_, and a _red nightfall_!"

The cry was echoed, and rose loud about me, and I stood in my stirrups and laughed again. For what could I do? It was my death, and the end of my house, and yet I was young, and I was strong, and I was king, the lord of a fell and wild and valiant people, who gathered about me in swirling streams like the tails of a cloud. The tears froze into determination on my face, and I drew my sword again and waited for the hammer-stroke to fall.

And – something – a miracle – and one which I could not comprehend. For the first of the Corsairs drew abreast of me, and I could see men clustered on the deck, and yet they were nothing that I understood, nothing true, nothing even real. And then at the forefront of the first ship a great black standard broke, and should that have been all I would have had no surprise, and waited still for death. But it caught and burst like flame, and this was no orc-sigil. Worked in _mithril_ and gems was the Seven Stars of Gondor, and beneath it the White Tree, and my heart was dazed and uncomprehending, and then I knew, and my desire for death changed again, into a wild and unforeseen joy.

"Aragorn!" I shouted. _"ARAGORN!"_

My voice carried thunderous on the wind, and the swelling wave of Rohirrim broke and parted, and the Corsairs drew up on the shallow rocky edge. Then it seemed as if their ancient timbers broke, and men came pouring out of them – but they were not men, as they were pale and translucent, ghosts that possessed the fervor of the living, but their hands clutched weapons and their hearts were valiant, and they cut and thrashed the stunned and terrified Morgul-host to pieces.

And behind them came Aragorn with stars on his brow and a terrible pale light in his eyes, and Andúril in his hand, and at his side was Legolas firing his longbow and Gimli wielding his axe. And the Grey Company came in thunder and in splendor into the light, and I turned then and rode like hellfire unloosed, and the foe fled before my face.

We made great wrack and ruin of the enemy, and killed them wherever they ran, and gave them no quarter and heeded no pleas for mercy. At last I had a respite from the bloody work, and there across the field from me was Aragorn, and I leapt down and ran to him, and his coming gladdened my heart immeasurably, which before had wished only for death and even now sobbed desperately at the loss of Théoden and Éowyn. But Aragorn and I met in the middle, and looked long on each other, and at last he broke the silence.

"True words I spoke, son of Éomund, when I said that we should still meet again in this world," he said simply.

I drew a shuddering breath, and smiled. "And desperately cheered I am to see it, in this dark hour," I answered, and my heart wept as my face laughed, and then there was still killing to be done, and foes running free within the encircling stone arms of the Rammas Echor, and Aragorn and I parted to finish it.

--------------

All day we continued the slaughter, and left no foe alive. The Sun went down into a veil of bloody cloud, and its passing left the icy peak of Mindolluin dyed with fire, and the red light lay thick among the black grass.

The enemy's bodies were heaped in stacks like wood, or burned like kindling, or else they turned and churned in the red foam of the river. Many thousands among the dead were also my men, Rohirrim, and dead horses as well, and I did not allow myself to think of my own losses, so that I might be still an example to my people. By skill or by sheer luck I had gone unscathed in the fight, and now I was weary beyond happiness or sorrow, so desperately weary, and the dream I had once cherished, of sleeping forever, now seemed close and dear to my heart.

The gates of Gondor opened, and Aragorn rode in with me, and Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth, a strong and fearless warrior, fair of face as befit his Elvish heritage and as skilled with arms as befit a great chieftain, and his silver swan mingled with white horse and white tree. We stopped a moment, and looked back on the horizon.

"Behold the sunset!" said Aragorn. "It bleeds the end of one age of this world, and heralds the coming of another. I am its bearer, and yet still I will wait. I will pitch my tents upon the field of our victory, and await the welcome of the Lord of this city."

I glanced at him. "You have raised the standard of Elendil," I said, my voice rough with exhaustion and long sorrow. "Will you suffer this to be challenged?"

"No," said Aragorn, "but it is not yet time, and I will not have a fight, save with Sauron and his servants." Then we turned and rode up the white causeways to the enfolding stone arms of Minas Tirith.

In the scarred, ruined courtyards of the City we dismounted, and my thoughts turned at once to Théoden and Éowyn, for I was not yet so weary as to forget the grief eating a hole into my heart. I sought to find the lord of Minas Tirith as well, and for another reason than Aragorn; I wished only to know where they had bestowed my lord and king, and my sister, dearer to me than my own life, and both whom I had lost.

Imrahil went with me, and we mounted up through the Citadel, and saw the ravages of battle upon the city, and we did not stop and moved quickly through the grey twilight until we came to the White Tower. There was no Steward there to greet us, however. Instead I found one of my missing kin. Théoden lay in a bed of state before the dais, which bore the great, white, long-empty throne of the King and the smaller black chair that must have been the seat of the Steward.

Twelve knights surrounded him, and twelve torches were lit, and he was bestowed in glory, with green and white hangings and fittings of gold, and Herugrim unsheathed lay in his hands, clasped to his lifeless breast, and his eyes were closed and he seemed only to sleep. Yet the splendor pleased my raw heart but little. I turned to the nearest knight and demanded, "Where is my sister? Where is the Lady Éowyn? She should be lying beside the king, and in no less honor!"

If they had laid Éowyn to rot in some dark, airless nook, then my urge to kill for the day was not yet sated, as many enemies I had put to death. I swallowed. I would not defile myself by murdering friends upon their own flagstones. But I had to find Éowyn. I had to know. Where did she lie, and how did death place its seal upon her?

The knight said softly, "But my lord Éomer, the lady Éowyn still lived when they brought her from the field. Did you not know?"

I had not. I did not. A future which was ice and ashes suddenly had a torch put to it, and a terrible and desperate hope came to my heart. Without a word, not trusting myself to speak, I turned and left that room, and Imrahil came after me, and I went among the people of the street and desperately put the question to them. All that mattered now was to find Éowyn, and to sit by her, and if I cried then, I did not feel it, and my voice was still steady, and they could not see the sobbing sparkle of my eyes in the darkness.

--------------

Shortly thereafter we met Mithrandir, his white robes torn and frayed at the edges from a day's long fighting, and his sword was still smeared with dark traceries of orc-blood. He told us that Éowyn had been placed in the Houses of Healing, and at that moment a grey-cloaked figure moved into the ring of light from the torch that I bore. It was Aragorn, and his face had become set and grim. He refused the request to rule Gondor until the new Steward, Faramir, awoke – the last remnant of the House of Anárion had also evidently taken some grievous hurt and wandered in fever-dreams. His father had immolated himself in madness, the story went, and his elder brother killed long since, and so the White City and Gondor both were left without a leader. Aragorn told Imrahil firmly that he should rule Minas Tirith in Faramir's stead, and the Lord of Dol Amroth accepted.

Then we went into the Houses of Healing, and beneath the low rafters the air was suffused with a pungent, roiling odor of sickness, and linen bandages were bloodstained, and bowls filled with assorted medicines had had no effect on the dreamers. A huddle of women who had been tending them clustered around, and did not dare to speak in the presence of such great lords, but their hope and fear was plain on their faces.

Aragorn looked on them with a frown, and on the dreamers – there were three, Faramir son of Denethor and Meriadoc the hobbit and then Éowyn, and my heart clenched as if in a vise, but she still lived and as long as she did, there was no reason yet to abandon all to despair. I looked at them, and wondered how they had fallen under such an evil plague, and wondered what could be done to aid them.

In the background Aragorn was pressing one of the women, a garrulous specimen named Ioreth, to find him kingsfoil, or _athelas _as he named it. While he was doing so, I regarded the dreamers, in curiosity and dread alike, and wondered what craft, whether of herb-lore or skill with medicines or even the more ancient sorceries, could draw them back. They slept white-faced and silent.

It was the first time I had seen the new Steward, a younger son and only heir, inheriting the position out of grave loss. Were I him, I thought, then my cares might also rest harsh on me, but I do not know if I could have gone seeking death, for my people would need me – and then I checked my thought and reminded myself how I had gone looking for death just earlier the very day, heedless and thoughtless of responsibility or consequence. It made me shiver, and somehow I felt a kinship to him.

Faramir was tall, yet not so physically overpowering as some of the other men of Gondor. He was slender as well, but wasted about the bones, and his face had gone thin and withered, cheekbones sunk into a hollow starvation. A gleam of sickly sweat lay like a dew-mantle on his brow, and his eyes moved restlessly beneath closed lids as if he was caught in a never-ending nightmare. In his face I could see a hint of his Dúnedain heritage, for he too was of the line of Elendil, and his hair lay in tangled raven-black locks on the pillow, the color matching the thin and straggling beard on his face.

But from Faramir my thoughts turned on, and went instead to the Halfling – he must have come with Éowyn to war, and I had known nothing of the riding of either of them. It was hard to look at that young, almost boyish face topped with a mop of sweaty brown curls, and I glanced on from him to Éowyn, who lay ice-white and motionless, her hair the palest gold glimmer about her. It was hardest at all to look on her, and I would not permit myself to think of what should happen if Aragorn should fail to rouse her. For they said that the hands of a king were the hands of a healer, but what could a mere man, even one gifted with the lore of Númenor, do against such a great and monstrous evil?

I turned back to look on them, dragging myself from the melancholy depths of my thought. Aragorn held Faramir's hand, and placed his other alongside the sick man's face, and called his name softly, and said things in a tongue that must have been Elvish, which Faramir certainly must not have known, but perhaps it was an incantation of sorts, from Aragorn's heritage. I stood in the background, not wishing to trouble them, but even I could see that it was going ill. Again the terrible specter of losing Éowyn confronted me, but I was king now, and not a sobbing filth-faced boy, and I stood still and waited as time waxed interminably onwards.

At last a boy came running in with six leaves in a white cloth, and Aragorn's face leapt at once to alertness. He smiled then, and although he looked weary, he moved without pause. He crumbled several of the leaves into the bowl of steaming water at his hand, and wafted the fume back and forth above Faramir's sweating, sleeping face. In the dim eaves of the room, the air seemed somehow fresher, or sweeter, and Aragorn bent down over him, and clasped his hand again as Faramir – impossibly, I could not fathom how – awoke.

Faramir's voice was clear, but hoarse and ragged, and he spoke slowly. "My lord, you have called me," he said, barely more than a whisper. "I have come. What is it you wish of me?"

"Do not walk longer in the shadows, son of Denethor," said Aragorn, and smiled softly, and laid Faramir's hand upon the blankets. "Rise now, and wake, and live." And with that, he left the new Steward to come to terms with having the world thrust so suddenly upon him again, and went instead to my sister's side, and at once I followed him.

--------------

Aragorn lifted Éowyn's arm from where it lay limp and useless on the coverlet; it had been broken by some instrument cruel enough to make me shy from imagining it. He frowned slightly, and said, "This I can heal, but there is another hurt which I can only do my best to dig out. The Black Breath has covered her, and she wanders far from here."

"It has not gone well for her," I said in a low voice, and sank down on the low chair beside the bed, looking at her as if I could somehow call her back to life with my eyes alone. "I knew that she was frightened, and furious at the Worm, and resented the life of a serving-maid, but I did not know how deep the frost had gone until I saw her grief when we thought you were lost." I swallowed, and bent my head. "I did not know until then that her despair had run deep enough to search for death." I reached out to touch her cheek, frozen and beautiful as a winter rose, and then my hand dropped back, for I was terrified of somehow interfering with Aragorn's work.

Gandalf had been standing in the corner, but at my words he stepped softly forward. "The Worm had not only poison for your uncle's ears, Éomer," he said. "He was also always about your sister, and spoke to her long as well, and had not her love for you, and her will to do her duty, restrained her, you may have heard his foul words from her lips. She did not believe them, or told herself that she did not, but in the depths of her despair, who knows what she spoke to the bitter watches of the night, trapped in her bower as it closed about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing?"

I did not know. How could I? I had not seen how deep the pain in Éowyn ran until far too late. Instead I looked at her silently and wondered if I had failed. I could not bear the thought.

--------------

"_Look after Mama and Éowyn, my lad," said the big, blonde-bearded, helmeted, solemn-faced man kneeling in the mud before me. His large hands grasped my skinny shoulders, for while I had seen eleven winters and had long since began the training to ride horse and wield blade, I was still only a boy. Although I wore my father's clothes and banged about with an overlarge sword tied to my waist and trailing in the mud, it was only a pretension for a child eager to grow up and taste true glory. _

"_Éomer, do you hear me?" the man asked. His armor smelled of polished mail and creaking leather, and the ever-present scent of horse wafted from the woolen tunic he wore beneath it. I remember the sky was pale and cold, and I shivered beneath my furry robe, for beneath it I wore only my long nightshirt and a pair of boots made for someone with far bigger feet. As a matter of fact, I only wanted to crawl back into the warm darkness of my bed; he had bundled me out of it at dawnbreak as he and his Riders were leaving, and I did not understand his haste._

_Behind us the shadows of men and horses moved across the courtyard, and I heard low worried voices melding together with the clink of buckles and tack. But the man still had me in a firm grasp, and he repeated the question._

_I squirmed, blowing a strand of golden, sleep-snarled hair out of my eye. "I understand, Papa," I said, eager for the warmth that must still lie beneath my blankets. "I'll look after Mama and Éowyn until you come back, and then you can do it." I must have been an incorrigible child, and were I my father then, I should have despaired._

_Éomund's gauntleted hands tightened their grasp on my bony shoulders. "I may not come back, Éomer," he said, so softly that I was never sure, then or after, if I was meant to hear it. Louder he said, "Well then, we shall do that, my lad? Look after your mother and sister to ease your father's foolish heart, and once I cut down these filthy usurpers invading our lands, we shall all be happy."_

"_Yes, Papa," I said obediently. It was chilly out there, and had I been older, I would have known that they were leaving so early to avoid the gaze of my uncle, who had grown distressed with how hotly and violently my father pursued Orcs, without thought to his own safety or to the wisdom of doing it. But I was a child then, and if I had known then that this would be the last time I would ever see my father alive, I might have cried and clung to him, not given him this youthful indifference that furrowed his great golden brow as he let go of me and stepped back. He pulled on his helmet and called to the men, and I might have stayed there to watch them go. But I did not._

_I returned to bed then, and slept shallowly, and the day went on and into the next, and the next, and no word came from my father, who at least sometimes sent a man of his éored home to tell his wife, our mother, of how the war went. Éowyn was but a girl, small and sweet and more given to doing womanly things, even though she looked at my child-size sword with lustful eyes and more than once I found her stroking it longingly. Even then I protected her with the brio of a spitting cat and thought only of her happiness, so I thought that when my father returned, I would have him make her one as well._

_But when he did come home, it was all wrong. There were torches, and clamor, and men shouting, and a riderless horse whinnying high and terribly in the dusk. Someone was sent to tell my mother, and to keep Éowyn away, and I looked at the motionless body beneath the drape, borne on the shoulders of the men, and did not understand. I asked where my father was, and this was the one question that I wished I had never asked, but sooner or later I would have known the terrible truth._

_They had taken several days to rescue him from the ravages of the orc-host that he had fallen into. They would not let Éowyn see his body, but they required it of me, since later I was to ascend to his position, and I must know the vile things our enemy could do. I stood there a shaking, terrified stripling, strong hands locked on my shoulders again, and looked at the ruined thing that was dressed richly and had its hair combed, and felt nothing at all. This hacked, hewn piece of bloodless flesh was not my father. I could not feel love, or hate, or pity, or sadness._

_I remember that the Orcs had cut off his eyelids, and his grey eyes, pockmarked with scabbed gouges, stared upwards terribly at the ceiling, until someone laid a black cloth over them. Frozen in them was a look of both dreadful pain, slight surprise, and a crushing relief, and I was not sure which of the three disconcerted me the most. _

_I could not look longer, and turned away with a whimper, and someone said passionately, "It's cruel to make the boy remember his father like this – he will learn of war's horror soon enough –" and that was the last I heard, because I fled from that horrible place. I ran out alone in the high golden plains that surrounded Edoras, and slept beneath the stars, and clung to a rock, and knew that things would never, never be the same again._

_For months, years, afterwards, that terrible face floated in my nightmares. I would wake, gasping, as fleshless lips peeled back to whisper in the darkness of my room, "Look after Mama and Éowyn, my lad…" Over and over it whispered, Éomund's ghastly face and mutilated body hiding in every corner of my chamber like a grisly ghost, and from this I began to know, later, of the madness that the darkness brought on in Éowyn, and to understand her fear of it. But even from beyond the grave my father commanded me to take care of her, and if I had failed now, I could never forgive myself, and nor could he._

--------------

"Éomer," said Aragorn softly, and his voice broke me from my dark reverie – I wondered how long I had been sitting there, if it had been an hour or a second. "I saw also what you did, and it grieved me deeply, for worse than any hurt a man can take in battle is to be given the love of a lady so fair and brave, and to be unable to return it. But she loves you more truly than I, for she loves and knows you, and in me she loves only a thought and a fragment, a half-desired promise and a murky future."

He bent over Éowyn then, and kissed her cold white brow, and crumbled another leaf into the bowl of water, and again the freshening scent rose up. "Awake, Éowyn daughter of Éomund!" he said to her, and I wondered again at his perception, for to invoke our father's ghost at this moment was either the best or worst thing that might be done. "Your foe is fled from you."

She stirred then, and her breast heaved, and the sheet over it moved as well as she drew great gulping, rasping breaths. I bit my lip to hold back a cry, and it seemed at last that a flush of color began to steal up the pale column of her neck and into her face. A sweet wind blew through the room, and teased curtains and coverings, and seemed to come from a long-distant mountain beneath a clear bright sky, or a star-flecked shore washed with waves of white foam.

"Awake, Éowyn, Lady of Rohan!" said Aragorn again, and held her hand in his, and then glanced to me. "The shadow is gone, and the darkness has been chased from you!" Then he reached over, and laid her hand in mine, and said, "Call her!" And with that he was gone, and left the two of us alone in the room save for the quiet shadow of Gandalf in the corner.

"Sister?" I said thinly, and felt tears welling up in my throat. I began to sob in earnest then, and said, "Éowyn! Éowyn!"

Her eyes opened and glanced up at me, and she smiled. Her hand came up to touch my face, which was still grimed with the residue of battle, and her fingertip trailed briefly through my dirty beard. A sight I must have been, a hulking grubby man in armor and sword, crouched by the side of the pale white woman who lay so serene and beautiful in the bed. But she said, "Éomer?" in disbelief and wonder. "Éomer, they said you were slain!"

I was about to say that I had thought the same of her, but she shook her head and murmured, "No, that was only my dreams. But how long have I been asleep?"

I kissed her hand where it still clasped mine, and said, "Not long, and yet far too long. But Théoden is slain, and he bade me tell you farewell, dearer than daughter." Théoden's loss clenched renewed at my own heart, but there was joy there, and relief, and a future that had grown bright again.

Éowyn's eyes drifted closed, and she said, "I am not surprised." There was something else there that she had not told me, and perhaps later she would. "But I suppose there are still things to be done."

Her voice startled me; for there was relief there, but still no glimmer of hope, and I wondered if she was angry that her wish for death had been thwarted. But before I could speak, Gandalf did, and he said, "It is wonderful to see you restored to health and hope, for such a valiant lady is truly rare. I must go, but Éomer shall stay."

Éowyn's eyes caught a smoldering spark which I did not understand, but she did not say anything for a moment. Then she mused, "There must be many riderless horses among our people, Éomer, and I shall help among them as I can, still a serving-maid upon the feet of the greater. Health I have been given, but hope? I do not know."

--------------

Gandalf left, and the two of us were alone, and I made a bed of my cloak on the floor and slept there, unwilling to leave her. Outside the window the city had gone onto deep night, so late that it must almost be dawn, and I had lost all sense of time or orientation. Soon enough I would be needed, but for a moment I could stay with Éowyn.

"What do you mean you have no hope restored?" I asked, as I lay on the floor with my eyes closed. Far off I could hear voices in other parts of the Houses, but here, it was quiet.

Éowyn did not answer immediately. At last she said, "I had gone seeking death, and I wake to find life, and I do not know what else has changed for me. You are a king now, Éomer, and you shall be strong and great. If you wish it, I shall come to Rohan with you and be your queen until you find a bride, but when you wed, then what? I will no longer even be lady in my own court. Must I wander without a home?"

I sat up in a sudden fright, and took her gently by the shoulders, tipping her chin so that she looked into my face, and read the truth in my eyes. "You will always be welcome and revered in Edoras so long as I sit the throne of Rohan," I swore to her.

She smiled faintly at me, and said, "Sleep, Éomer. We have both had a trying time."

I took her at her word, and lay back down, but did not feel entirely reassured. We fell asleep locked hand in hand, me on the floor, her on the bed, and although it was dark in the room, the greatest shadow had leavened.


End file.
